fashion residency begins at khoj – day 1

On one of my visits to Khoj studios last year, I passed by three twelve-thirteen year-olds sitting on a motorcycle shouting out at a black-burqa-wearing, elderly woman passing by : Their accusing screams – ‘Iraqi! Iraqi! Oye Iraqi…’ – were followed by a spontaneous, almost-fun session of improvised music-making; the motorcycle seats became a tabla for percussion, the metal of the motor a ground for their teenage palms, as they played to a Bollywood beat.

It was odd, to be faced with such sudden ridicule turning into merry-making, the woman walking on seemingly unfazed by the commotion.

An everyday occurrence, I wondered?

A little ahead, I see a young man – distinguished in his effeminate walk – with decorative lilts in every step, and a colourful mizhaj that shone through his otherwise rather drab-pale clothes.

The inner landscapes can represent a self, often not disguised by clothes?

The scene changes with my every trip to Khoj. Sometimes, one passes groups of giggling college girls – odd only in their African clothes which stand out amidst the general sartorial codes of Khirki village’s narrow gullis – but which often seem only natural to a place changing constantly, so dynamic in its diversity, and yet so endearing in its sameness. Sometimes, I find a crowd of men around the local dhobi’s daughter who holds court in her little shop – often with brightly painted lips and a suggestive button open on her blouse – she plays, flirts, and leaves them hanging for more as she returns to her mundane, everyday chores of creasing out lines from freshly dried clothes.

What are her aspirations I wonder? What does she want to be?

Through my years at design school, I often struggle to explain to more ‘enlightened’ colleagues from graphic and product design disciplines on the importance of fashion and how it has shaped much of who and what we are today. So, when Pooja Sood asks me if I would be interested in doing something on fashion with Khoj, I jump at once with an instant ‘Yes!’: I cannot think of a more powerful force in culture today than fashion – something that is second skin, communicates so immediately, leads a consumerism that makes or breaks nations, and yet is always seen as ‘only something about the clothes that we wear’.

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Perhaps we would think differently if the burqa that becomes mandatory on us, did merely represent a symbolic notion of our religion and identity. Perhaps we would think differently if the same financial aspirations that forced us to go to ‘Rapidex English Speaking Courses’ in jeans – to get ‘better’ at our job – also addressed the realities of our panchayats back home that bans us from wearing jeans. Perhaps we would think differently if Hijras wore shirts and trousers and went to work in offices like yours and mine, IF they got work in offices like yours and mine.

In the drama of our universes; where identities get created rigidly and change amorphously, where the clash of differences often lead to the utterance of a never-before-seen other, where white money’s khadi kurtas hide black money’s American underwears; fashion – this phenomena of change – deserves a moment’s pause for reflection.

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