Sometimes I chafe, dig my hook-and-eyes

into the breastbone, just to feel my wearer

take pause, tilt her head, as if hearing a lament.

Yesterday, I saw an Indian actress on live tv: her thigh

-high hemline, the slap—why does he think it

his right? I think of our temple-carved goddesses,

their bare breasts in high-relief—worshipped.

My name—half Hindi, half English—is a myth.

I am a skin that swallows another skin, a garment

that buries the heart by design. You might

think me homegrown, but in my early days

I looked Victorian—ruffled and collared,

concealing the neck as if it were a flaw—O!

the reasons for mimicry, cut on the bias and

whipstitched. Sure, these days I flaunt midriffs, plunge

at the chest. Still, I fasten firm. My existence a gaze

rooted like bindweed across open fields.



Note: Written in response to reading the online BBC article ‘Dressing the Indian woman through history’, published 6 December 2014