All the things that teenage Indian girls can relate to!
By: Sumati Huber
What a Lazy Indian Girl’s Room Looks Like
Being an Indian girl is not always easy. We are required to conform to many cultural expectations and be domesticated as well. Part of that means maintaining our bedrooms and keeping it tidy. But that’s not always the reality when your room becomes your sanctuary to unwind, relax and escape the world. Here are some elements you will find in a lazy Indian girl’s room:
Bindis Stuck Along the Side of The Mirror
After being forced to transform into our best Indian selves for the many society functions we attend, there’s the conundrum of where to put our bindi when we are done using it. Your room obviously looks like it was hit by a monsoon with the makeup, jewelry and outfits you rifled through to get ready, and in that mess, you definitely misplaced the bindi packet. But it would be a waste to throw the bindi away because you can definitely reuse it another time. So you decide to stick the bindi along the side of your mirror and “deal with it later” until you have a dotted collection growing there. Only when you do try to remove it, you now have the problem of the super sticky bindi glue causing unsightly marks all over your mirror. But you can always deal with that later too.
Heavy Indian Outfits Falling Off the Hanger
There needs to be a whole wing in our house dedicated to keeping our Indian clothes, or perhaps we should rent out storage space for them. The sheer volume, size and details of the outfits are such that even normal clothes hangers cannot sustain their weight. Trying to fold a massive lehenga skirt requires a personal trainer to help you lift the different sections. The only feasible option is putting our Indian attire in large garment bags, but fitting all the elements in there is like trying to cut roti with a knife and fork — impossible. So, we just stuff the clothes in our closet the best way we know how, and hope it works out because chances are we wouldn’t dare to repeat the same outfits anyway.
‘Inappropriate’ Items Hidden in the Back of a Drawer
On the surface it looks innocent: a drawer with your folded pyjamas. But lurking underneath the innocuous items we have our ‘inappropriate’ things that we would never want our parents to see. Skimpy bikinis reserved for beach trips with your friends, sheer crop tops you would never dare put in the wash at home, a necklace your non-Indian boyfriend gifted you…No one would ever guess what’s hiding in there. You tense up every time the drawer is opened for your freshly-laundered pyjamas to be put back, but feel a sigh of relief when it’s closed again without fuss. Make sure to warn your maid that this drawer is off-limits and she never needs to reorganise it, let alone report anything to your mom.
Things You Don’t Get Rid of, “Just in Case”
Remember those baggy kurtas your aunt gave you so you would look more presentable at the mandir? Or the stacks of mismatched plastic bangles your well-meaning relatives brought back from India so you would always have something on your wrist? Or the camera, lighting equipment, and tripod you purchased when you decided to be a fashion influencer for one week? Yes, all these items you will never use are cluttering up your space because you think you may need it again one day. You know you will never dare to appear in public with that frumpy kurta that makes you look completely out of touch with style, and you already have your go-to wrist stack that you wear daily. Perhaps you will only put on these pointless things if you were filming a what not to wear video, but that will also require you to sort through the tangled cords of your discarded video equipment, and who has time for that?.
An unreformed party girl and mother of two, writer, editor and observer Sumati Huber tries to make sense of our unique Thai-Indian society and the aunties that she will one day become.
