Desi Dialogues

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As I settled down with my popcorn and Pepsi in the family room to watch an English movie, I was pleasantly surprised to see the Hollywood heroine was wearing a short kurta (a short Indian shirt) with her jeans.

There scrawled across her green kurta were the words Om nava shivaya - a sacred Hindu chant.

This chant is popular with many western folks and I saw many such kurtas being worn by foreigners in various parts of India on my recent trip home. But these aren't the only ones that appeal to westerners. A whole array of beautiful Indian fabrics, often hand-woven (called handlooms), are patronized by westerners primarily because the colours and designs are uniquely Indian, and being primarily made from cotton they are great for the Indian summers.

Here in Toronto, one sees several South Asians wearing this type of clothing. Currently the fashion is to wear a kind of stole over the short kurta with jeans or pants. The Indian version of a stole - a 2.5-metre-long piece of cloth called the dupatta - is worn over the Indian kurta.

Essentially the kurta was never meant to be that short but instead was meant to be long, almost flowing down under the knees and worn with a more traditional layered salwar - the Indian version of pants.

But what I like is that the Indian salwar-kurta has been anglicized and fashionably worn like a western outfit with jeans. It's like the South Asians are saying "we like our Indian outfits, but we'd like to make it somewhat contemporary for the western culture here."

In India, too, girls have taken on this new fashion.

On my recent trip, I did not mind wearing a dupatta over my shirt and jeans. (In times past, jeans were not to be meshed with long-flowing dupattas and if you'd asked me to wear this some years ago I might not have done so).

 

Travelling to India now a breeze

One interesting thing for many Torontonian South Asians is that travelling from Toronto to either Mumbai or Delhi has become really comfortable because we now have an Indian private carrier - Jet Airways takes Torontonians to these places with little fuss.

Now we do not have to endure endless connections and stopovers to reach India (which takes close to 22 hours). Jet Airways flies directly to Brussels and we just have a small two-hour wait to connect either to Mumbai or Chennai (Madras).

But best of all, this is one airline where I found Indian hospitality at its best.

The crew is extremely courteous (unlike the somewhat brash experiences many of us have had with when travelling on Air India, our national carrier). For those who complain we do not have enough "Indian entertainment on board," I was surprised to hear classical Indian and pop music, Bollywood movies and the old classics as well.

And as Jet Airways has its own security at Mumbai airport, I did not have to stand in long queues to just get my bags under scanning machines by the Mumbai airport authorities. What a relief that was.

My passports were scanned even before I reached the counter by Jet staff and the bags were quickly scanned and a polite staffer checked them in for us.

I'd say for all of us South Asians who have had their share of nightmares travelling, this one trip really showed me that we could be proud of at least one Indian airline that was at par and many a time even exceeded the service of other international airlines.