Fashion Disasters

Just before the college carol service on Sunday, as the choir was milling around outside the chapel waiting for the chords that would signal us to start marching down the aisle, two of my friends, Beena and Pretty (yes, that's really her name...), came over to me, grabbed my arm and whispered urgently, "Andy, we have to talk to you."

From the way they said it, I was guessing that an attempt was going to be made on my life, so I followed them with equal urgency. They led me about ten meters away from the larger group and said in hushed voices laden with gravity "You need to tuck in your shirt."

So I laughed and tucked in my shirt.

I laughed, not because of the fact that an untucked shirt was a matter of life and death, nor because they were so interested in preserving my dignity and showing the proper respect to a teacher and Westerner that they felt the need to inform me of this in private. I laughed because this is the third time I have been sternly reprimanded for my gross impropriety of dress and appearance.

For a country where most homes don't even have indoor plumbing and deodorant is completely unfamiliar, India is positively obsessed with appearances and vanity.

There are very strict codes of what is considered appropriate with regard to one's appearance. And I am daily at variance with these codes. Normally, people are willing to overlook it because I am a foreigner. But when my breaches of propriety impinge upon someone else's image, you better believe I hear about it!

The first talking-to I got was from a fellow named P.T. (not to be confused with P.I., from the last post) John at Chacko Homes. After lunch one day, John rang my doorbell and said, with the same sense of quiet, earnest urgency I heard from the girls on Sunday, "Andrew, I need to talk to you about something." I had been wearing a plain white T-shirt around that day, and apparently this is entirely unacceptable. White T-shirts are considered underwear and are not to be worn in public. This is the equivalent of showing up for dinner in your tighty whities (which is pretty high on my list of things to do, actually).

The second time my appearance became a problem was when a friend invited me to visit his family's home in the Idukki district one weekend. When he showed up on Saturday morning to collect me, he looked at me with dismay and said, "Oh no, this is very bad. I can not take you like this." I was confused. I looked exactly the same as I do every day-- khakis, button-down shirt, hair fairly neatly combed (I know, I can't believe I dress like this every day either...), so I didn't see what the problem was. But my shirt wasn't tucked in, I didn't have a belt. And worst of all was my scruffy beard. Americans in magazines, he said, are all precisely dressed, clean-shaven, and have perfect coifs.

Indians, especially Indian males age 17-23, worship all thingsAmerican and do their best to model themselves after Leonardo DiCaprio circa Titanic, the Backstreet Boys, and male models in magazines.

I am problematic because I meet precisely none of these standards. He didn't want his family to meet Andy the Missionary-- he wanted an American Ken doll to show off. Which sort of makes sense. In a place as anglophilic as Kerala, having a white American friend to show off is a tremendous status symbol, and is sure to bump up your coolness and respectbility quotient a few notches.

So on sunday, I tucked in my shirt and I don't wear white T-shirts around anymore. But my hairline is not conducive to a coif, and I like my pubescent beard so I'm going to keep it, thank you very much. I'll accomodate India to a certain extent. But like my brother says, yeah, I'm here to absorb all of India I can. But I'm also here to give India the Andy Smith Experience. So I've got to stay true to who I am.