Thank you George

In the wake of September 11, the ‘Muslim world’ has fallen headfirst into an identity crisis. While falling on one’s head is generally quite painful, the fall was buffered by the fact that the ‘Muslim world’ doesn’t really have a head to begin with, just a series of pus filled tentacles and far too much testosterone. Things are complicated by the fact that for all its testosterone, this collection of oddballs determined to find some basis for kinship where none actually exists, doesn’t really have any those little globular accessories some like to believe are the repositories of that sacred hormone. It can always be practical and keep the testosterone in those neat little brocade purses handed out at weddings but refuses to on the grounds of it being too effeminate. Identity crisis, gender discrimination, rivers of testosterone flowing wildly through the streets, thank God for kurti’s or I’d be seriously questioning our collective intellect.

Kurti’s are the little shift type garments everyone seems to be wearing nowadays (myself included, too fat for baby t’s). Why kurti and not kurta? Well, precedent can no doubt be found in joota jooti, bootha boothi, kutta kutti etc.

I don’t know about Lahore but Karachi’s version of 5th Avenue, Zamzama, is festooned with banners proclaiming Kurti sales galore. Elegant. Exquisite. Stylish. Sophisticated. Designer. Finer. Exclusive. Fabulous. Divine. Attractive. Beautiful. Glorious. I haven’t seen this many self-congratulatory adjectives outside a government performance review. And the comparison seems even more apt when you think about how both purchasing one of these things for an exorbitant amount and governance, make little economic sense. But then kurti’s, for one, are not about economics.

Kurti’s are the intelligent, educated and financially secure Pakistani woman’s response to the new identity crisis. Men like to throw/launch/fire hard projectiles at each other as a way of protest. Women choose to express themselves through fabric. When a lonely woman dresses up, her outfit is her siren song, daring to say what her tongue never could. When an old woman wears ‘young’ clothes, she is wallowing in the heady perfume of distilled youth. When an angry woman ferociously dusts a sideboard, she is obliterating every trace of you from her life. Whatever the situation, no matter how grievous the problem, like valley dwellers in times of flood heading for the highlands we will head for the thaans and everything will be all right. Enter the kurti.

The kurti is an abbreviated version of the kurta, which is an abbreviated version of the kameez, which is an abbreviated version of an abaya, which is a blanket statement about modesty. (I’m no scholar so I’m probably just making this whole thing up; a first in the print profession if ever there was one) Wearing kurta’s in normal life in Karachi is interpreted by casual onlookers as one of two things. Pride in your Indian heritage. Marxist/bohemian tendencies. It is at that point, bohemia versus the mainstream, that the kurti and the kurta part ways. When it comes to parting of ways, I like to think that’s how we later jean wearing generations were gifted with the shalwar; one nether bit of the abaya parted from the other and their lovers spat meant shalwars and the people who wore them would forever be considered the bastards of the Arab world.

Both kurti’s and kurta’s start at about the same point but the former ends considerably higher, depending on the physical condition and self esteem of the wearer. It can be gauzy and pale, or severe yet vibrant. It can be fashioned from plain fabric or embellished by hand. It is fashion’s version of humble pie. Now that we know the West can really be as silly as the East we want to explore our roots further, but we can’t revert to hijab or long dupatta’s because hey, we’re still progressive. We still want the best of both worlds. We want clothes that can be worn on shopping trips to London and slumming in inner cities. We want clothes that tell foreigners we have good bodies and locals that we can speak their language (though our sentences are shorter and sometimes have bell sleeves).

No one is really sure whether short kurta’s have always existed, but research suggests this form has never been so effectively phonetically articulated before. Some say that if they didn’t exist before, how would we know what long kurta’s were? As in was there a sky before someone pointed upwards and grunted ‘look at that big blue blob that stretches across the horizon, let us call it the sky since fire and flatulence is already taken.’ Most say they don’t really care. This is just an example of the deep philosophical probing that clothing inspires in the Pakistani. If you want to be really deep, consider the following theory currently doing the rounds of my living room (I tied it to my cat’s tail when she got the evening crazies). The word kurti can be divided into two sounds. Kur and ti. If you mispronounce Kur you get Kar, which in Urdu means ‘do.’ If you mispronounce the plural of ti, which is ti’s, you get the sound teese. Or tease. In other words, calling them kurti’s is a wink towards their actual purpose, which is ‘Do tease.’ This theory is designed to especially appeal to people who like to listen to popular music backwards and find evidence of satanic verses. Or Barbers Associations that plan to slap hefty fines and punitive closure on barber shops that offer shaves.

At some point the kurti clad and the bearded will meet and clash? What will happen? Considering the proactive approach of fashion and textile entrepreneurs, beard stuffed kurti throw cushions will be all the rage.