Sideways on a Scooter (37 page)

In fact, until recently, bras were the exclusive preserve of the upper middle class, and even today, the poorest Indian women do not wear them. Radha used tight-fitting sari blouses instead. Geeta’s mother had owned no more than two or three bras her whole life, washing them carefully by hand every week. For decades, she and the rest of India’s bra-wearing minority had a choice of only two brands. Geeta’s mother picked Groversons’ “Paris Beauty,” in either white or beige. I assume the worldly name appealed to the upwardly mobile, although the sensible, polyester-blend garments didn’t evoke Parisian couture in any way apparent to me.

But the days of Groversons were over. Geeta had access to a wider diversity of brassieres than her mother and grandmother could have dreamed of. I knew, because in my effort to avoid wearing dowdy Indian bras, I’d discovered a couple of places that sold imported Asian and European underclothes. When the British chain Marks & Spencer opened an outlet in a Delhi mall, I actually called my mother to tell her. She could understand my excitement, having first taught me the joys of M&S bras.

An American friend had recently told me an Indian-run boutique, Curves, boasted a specialty in “adventurous intimate wear for Indian tastes.” I thought it would be fun to check it out for Geeta’s honeymoon needs—though I knew Parvati would laugh at me for trying to participate in Indian wedding traditions. My displays of what she called “
feringhee
enthusiasm” for India-specific activities always cracked her up.

Apparently, Delhi ladies were not yet taking advantage of the new openness in the Indian bra market. When we arrived at shopping prime time, midmorning on a Saturday, the entrance to Curves was deserted. Faced with the large curves sign over the building, Geeta faltered, and I had to remind her that teddies and thongs were essential to the honeymoon experience. She squared her jaw.

The building
chowkidar
, a lanky guy clad in a ratty security guard uniform, was sharing a bidi on the street outside with some other guards. It looked as though he passed most of his hours this way. When he saw Geeta and me moving toward the shop, he made a lunge for the entrance and all but shoved us aside on the staircase in his ardor to sprint up ahead of us so that he could do his job and pull open the door.

Inside, incense and Sikh
gurudwara
chants filtered through the empty store, imbuing the racks of swimsuits and underwear with an unlikely religiosity. A portly Sikh man charged over.

“Good hellos! Hello hello!” he shouted in heavily accented English, shattering the calm. He introduced himself, but I quickly forgot his name; to Geeta and me, he was always Mr. Curves. He had an exaggerated bravado and seemed to have been born without the Indian modesty gene that usually applies to all matters sexual. Mr. Curves lost no time in informing us that he “had a strong interest in the bras for the curvy ladies of India.” He gestured toward his wife, who had come up behind him, and she modestly acknowledged her curvaceous figure with a slight curtsy. He sent her off for glasses of water and drew an hourglass figure in the air with his hands.

“Why did I get this interest? Why do you think?”

The two of us were still lingering awkwardly at the entrance to his store. I took care not to look at Geeta so I wouldn’t laugh.

“Because I wanted for the ladies to be comfortable! India is a very great country, but the ladies of large bosoms were never feeling nice. That’s why ten years ago I began making my designs. And today, the Delhi ladies are catching up with my forward ideas. Now too many ladies are coming to buy my intimates. Too
too
many!”

The evident untruth of this made me wonder what Geeta must be thinking.

“Do you only carry bras for full-figured women?” I ventured.

“No no, madams. We are also importing bras for all kinds of ladies. Look in my store, you will see sexy-sexy designs from Thailand, from Germans, from … many other countries. The ladies are loving us too much. And their gents are loving us even more.”

He gave us an unsubtle wink, his head wobbling-nodding comically. I sneaked a look at Geeta. She looked as if she was dying to get away from this lusty salesman her father’s age. In a bid to save our outing, I suggested that Mrs. Curves might show us around, rather than her husband. Before he scuttled out, Mr. Curves handed us each a plastic keychain in the shape of a female figure and embossed with the store’s name. Geeta’s lip curled with disgust—I knew Maneesh would pluck the keychain from the garbage the following morning.

Geeta dragged behind as Mrs. Curves led us through the store, not wanting to appear eager to get her hands on the lacy G-strings we could see lining the back walls. We passed an aisle of maternity clothes, which, Mrs. Curves informed us, was new.

“Ladies used to just go to the tailor as their bellies grew. That’s what I did—just had a slightly bigger
salwar kameez
tailored every month or two. But now that women are working in offices, they are needing to look professional. They are wanting better choices, like the slacks with expandable elastic waists we are selling here.”

I could tell Geeta had stopped listening; we’d had arrived at the wall of underwear. She gazed in wonderment at racks hung with satin girdles, string bikinis, and a series of transparent bras edged with fake fur. It was an impressive display, considering that jeans and a T-shirt is considered a racy outfit in most parts of India. Mrs. Curves offered a sympathetic smile to Geeta’s stunned expression.

“Some of the Asian and French styles are quite wild. But these days, Indian girls are wanting this kind of fetish wear after the wedding … to surprise their groom.”

I thought of Mehboob and Hena’s saucy honeymoon shots and wondered what she’d been wearing underneath that cropped jean jacket. Mrs. Curves pulled out a black silk bustier; the matching underwear of
the set featured a fire-red flower on the crotch. Geeta looked at the price tag and gasped.

“What? Do girls really pay so much money for such a tiny thing?”

Mrs. Curves seemed well prepared for this reaction.

“Yes,
betee
. A lot of ladies come in and say ‘
Hoo hoo!
Why spend all that money on something when you’re just going to take it off!’ But their daughters, if they are modern girls”—she looked pointedly at Geeta—“they’ve seen intimate wear in films and music videos. They want to have fun with these sexy pieces.”

The sales pitch had the desired effect on Geeta, who was determined to be a modern bride, whatever that might entail. She informed our saleswoman that she, too, was in the market for “fun items” for her honeymoon—although she’d probably choose something a little less “forward” than the underwear with the red-flower crotch.

“Congratulations,
betee
. I thought you must be doing your marriage. And where is the honeymoon happening?”

This was a question Geeta loved to be asked. Her honeymoon destination was irrefutable evidence that she was an adored bride of the globalizing India. Her husband wasn’t taking her somewhere predictable and domestic, such as Goa, but rather to Thailand, on what would be her first-ever beach vacation and only her second-ever trip outside of India. Thailand is just a four-hour flight from Delhi, but nondomestic travel is still rare for all but India’s upper crust. Mrs. Curves reassessed Geeta with an approving eye.

“Veeery lucky girl!”

Geeta acknowledged this statement with a regal nod. Glancing around again at the wares, though, her confidence faltered again.

“Actually, I don’t know what I need. What do girls wear at the beach in Thailand? I only have one or two minis. Do I need more? And bikini … I am not sure I am brave enough. What Indian girl even knows swimming?”

Mrs. Curves was accustomed to the shopping traumas of brides-to-be.

“Hardly any Indian girls have learned to swim,
betee
. Of course, that
doesn’t mean you can’t wear a bikini. But many Indian girls are too shy to be wearing something so skimpy in public. Only in private they wear the sexy-sexy numbers.”

Geeta looked relieved.

“Maybe I’ll skip the bikini, then.” She gave Mrs. Curves a sidelong glance. “You are also Punjabi, right?” The saleswoman nodded as though this was self-evident. “So you know that in our tradition, the new bride should discard her old clothes before she moves to her in-laws’.” Mrs. Curves nodded again. “My mother wants me to do things the Punjabi way, even though I am going to marry a South Indian …” Geeta’s sentence dribbled out, and she looked at Mrs. Curves, whose eyebrows were raised skeptically.

“Accha?”
she said, using the word for “really” archly. “You are marrying someone from different community? Hmm, I guess modern girls have all kinds of love matches these days.”

I felt a wave of annoyance, but Geeta was accustomed to other people weighing in on her personal life. Her focus was just to ensure that our saleswoman was aware that while she was a modern girl, she also had traditional bona fides.

“Actually, I am not having a love match. It’s love-cum-arranged.”

Worried that the day would disappear into a lengthy discussion of marriage—a topic I was now totally sick of—I jumped in to change the subject.

“I didn’t know that you had to replace all your old clothes.”

To my relief, Geeta turned to address me.

“Yeah, everything. I’ll give them to my cousins or the servants. You see why I have so much shopping to do—it all has to go.”

“Who pays for all of it?”

“My father, of course. He’s been saving since I was born, Miranda. He transferred the money into my account as soon as he got back from Bangalore.”

The mention of money set Mrs. Curves straight. Reminded of the dollar value of collecting on Geeta’s wedding wardrobe, she was happy to abandon her moral qualms about a cross-cultural love match.

“Let’s start with the intimates!” she said.

Geeta turned to the task at hand.

“Okay. I should mention that my fiancé has told me about his preferences. He says nothing in silk or red. He doesn’t like such styles. He mostly prefers black lace.”

I must have looked as shocked as Mrs. Curves did. Although Geeta talked to Ramesh every night, I hadn’t considered that their conversations might ever drift into the realm of sex.

“He told you that?” I said.

Geeta nodded with forced nonchalance and wandered away, toward another rack of underclothes. Mrs. Curves’s eyebrows were up in the air again. For a woman who spent her days hawking racy underwear, she had a flawless expression of moral superiority.

“Hoo hoo,”
she said to Geeta’s retreating back. “Boys these days—they are having all kinds of experiences before the wedding. I suggest you buy some adventurous numbers!”

One morning, I found Usha and Azmat, Leslie’s two employees, in intense discussion on the gym mats. It was raining hard outside, so there were no customers in the Fitness Circle. They were conserving electricity by sitting in the light of only one fluorescent bulb; even the radio was off. As I came down the stairs, shaking off my umbrella, Usha leaped up to turn on more lights. Her guilty expression made me curious; surely something was going on.

“What have you ladies been talking about?”

“Oh, nothing,
deedee,
” said Usha, avoiding my eye.

But Azmat nudged her: “Usha-
deedee
was just explaining sex to me.”

They dissolved into cackles as she said the English word.

I sat down. After much embarrassed laughter, Usha capitulated.

“I was telling Azmat that I didn’t know about it either until my wedding night. I mean, I knew something was going to happen, and I knew it was called ‘sex,’ but I didn’t know how it worked. When my husband came near me, I backed away.”

“You mean that no one told you about it? Not even at school?”

The ladies laughed at my naïveté.

“School! That’s the last place you’d learn about such things,
deedee
.”

Azmat said that when she first got her period, she’d assumed she was dying. Her sister found her hunched over the toilet, afraid to move.

“Later, my mother told me that this always happens when girls get older, and that I should use a rag in my underwear. She didn’t exactly explain it, though. She never told me that a girl’s period is related to sex.”

“I didn’t know I would get my period before it happened, either,” Usha added. “When it happened, I fainted from all the blood.” She paused. “It’s not good that things are this way in India. I don’t want my daughter to be as ignorant as I was.”

Even after years with the gym ladies, Leslie was regularly startled by how little they knew about their bodies. In an effort to remedy the situation, she’d bought a subscription for the gym to a wholesome Hindi magazine called
Grihshobha
. It is essentially a low-budget version of
Woman’s Day
with more moralizing articles about good hygiene and safe sex.

All the gym ladies had read the articles about birth control, Usha said.

“It’s the thing every married woman worries about. We used to be too shy to talk about it, but once someone brought it up to Leslie, we started asking questions. All of us have the same problem: We don’t have enough money for more than two or three children.”

“It’s not popular to have lots of children these days,” Azmat piped up. She didn’t like to be excluded from a gym conversation, even if the topic, such as this one, was not relevant to her life. Usha, on the other hand, had given it a lot of thought. Although she had never visited a ladies’ doctor, she was proud to tell me that she’d discussed birth control with her husband. She had a well-thought-out take on the importance of birth control these days—it was because things were different in the globalizing India, she said.

“Our parents had lots of kids, but things have changed. Now we want to send our children to school and give them a good life.”

Azmat was about to speak, but stopped herself and looked to Usha for permission, who nodded somewhat reluctantly. “Usha-
deedee
told me that her husband agreed to use condoms, just like
Grihshobha
says husbands should!” said Azmat.