Vogue for villagers

One of the most bizarre fashion trends I've seen is the long gown that village women hang around in. This is basically a loose cotton nightdress that is worn in the daytime. A kind of day-nightdress you could say. It has short sleeves, a modest neckline, and it falls all the way down to the ankles.

Women wear it through the day, traipsing around the village as if any moment they'll be jumping back into bed.

The gown is eminently practical. It's cool, comfortable, easy to wash and, most important of all, it keeps their nice clothes nice and new. Why bother to dress up when there's nowhere to go? (This place doesn't even have a movie theatre.)

The only time most of them get out of their day-nightdresses is when they have to catch a bus to go to Chaudi, a dirty little market on the highway. Saturday is market day, and villagers come from the nearby villages dressed in their Saturday best. This means a salwar-kurta for young women. Once called the Punjabi dress and worn only in the North, the salwar-kurta now seems to be the favoured garment in all the villages of India. National unity!

And though the village belle might look drab on most days and nothing like her counterpart in Bollywood films, when villagers dress up they do it with a vengeance. Particularly the Christians.

As I saw yesterday.

It was a sunny Sunday morning and the feast of St Theresa was being celebrated at the imposing village church set on a slight elevation on a dusty stretch of national highway. Old fashioned dance music was playing. And colourful stalls selling orange ladoos and toys lined the road. Milling about in this carnival atmosphere were excited village women and young village girls, all resplendent in dresses made from satin and velvet and other shiny material, in shimmering purples, greens, blues, reds. Dresses glittery with sequins. With yards of lace and ruffles and nets. With bows and frills and other baubles. Dresses that looked straight out of a catalogue for bedecked Christmas trees. In comparison the men were positively dowdy, in identical oversized and rather mossy black suits.

When the party was over, I knew that like Cinderella they'd be back in their day-nightdresses, broom in hand, sweeping the leaves in the courtyard. Until the next festivity.