The reason her black bindi stood out in her Delhi college, was because 'in the North mostly only married women wore bindis'
Illustration/Uday Mohite
A College friend of my mother’s once told me “I remember Shikha, that girl in the bindi.”
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My mum, who grew up in Bombay, began wearing bindis in school. Because she started wearing saris in school. Because “I had very hairy legs and wanted to cover them up”. Necessity is the mother of fashion. Those days bindis meant kumkum. For a ‘modern’ touch, some people used to make a little gola with lipstick. “Then a brand called Shringar bindi came in the market so I began wearing a black bindi.” (Oh, that carousel of multi-coloured Shringar wet bindi. I especially remember their electric blue). The reason her black bindi stood out in her Delhi college, was because “in the North mostly only married women wore bindis.”
One of my mum’s classmates liked the idea. “So she also began wearing it and then a few other girls got into it so it became a thing in my college.” My mum, a Hindu-Muslim combo child, wore a bindi for fashion, which, you will agree is the most-best reason to wear many things. What is not a good reason? The pursed lip tweets of social media pseudo traditionalists, who had conniptions this week because models in a Fab India ad were not wearing bindis, and the festive season was called Jashn e Riwaz.
Some folks pointed out, “it’s riwaj and not riwaz, Fab India you fake traditionalists”. Since I live in Maharashtra where j often becomes z, as in, har taraf tera zalva, I am in the whatever department on pronunciation. However I am invested in fashion.
I began wearing bindis in college because churidar kameez came into fashion and because, you know, Shilpa char chand lagaye. Now, single and married women and gender fluid people from varied backgrounds wear bindis, with saris, skirts and pants if they like. From the maroon, black, multicolour pack back then to now, the bindi business is a garden of complicated shapes with gems, glitter,felt, even 3-D materials. It’s all very overwhelming and once I got so confused, I ended up buying a patta of what I realised at home were hair bindis—glittering items you can stick on to your hair for a decorative pattern without professional intervention.
In many cities, shops that sell bindis, latkans, neon nailpaint and glitter shadow are called fancy stores, and often named Choice Fancy Store, Your Choice Fancy Store or My Choice Fancy Store—meaning, a store where you go to choose something you fancy. Yaniki we are doing rather well with our bindi situation (or not if you object to my wearing said hair bindis as regular bindis), without the advice of either Fab India or Twitter K3G gents, who may or may not know ki #trending and #trendy are not same-same-but-different, as riwaj tend to be. What is their expertise on the matter? Yaniki, chutki bindi ki keemat kya tum jaante ho Ramesh babu? Tomorrow they may also get confused when they see that Maharashtrian crescent and dash-dot bindi, like a chand tara, and denounce it as too Mughlai. Stick-ons might eventually seem too un-traditional as they don’t require two handmaidens and a zamindar’s wife to put on. Before you know it we will be commanded to wear lipstick golas again. Are you ready for that, whatever your politics? Yeah, thought not.
Paromita Vohra is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker, writer and curator working with fiction and non-fiction. Reach her at paromita.vohra@mid-day.com
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