Week 15, India is Colorful

When it’s not dirty, India is sooooo colorful, especially all the clothes that women wear. They dress head to toe in every color imaginable. When I was in Sangli shopping for a sari, we went into a material shop where they had petticoats is all colors to match any sari you can find. They also had an even bigger variety of materials for making the blouse for the sari. Here is the wall full of petticoats.


This is in our favorite material shop, called Lunkad Fabrics. We usually go upstairs where they sell sheets, blankets, pillow cases and dress material (for Punjabi suits that you get tailor made). Downstairs they just have loads of material in all different colors that you buy to get blouses and petticoats made for saris, or plain bottoms for the suits.


Before we came to India, Katie, the girl who went on the EWB placement last year, told us about ‘Bangle Alley’. It’s a little side street where all they sell are bangles in every color you can imagine. There are at least 15 little shops all selling the same thing. (It is a common occurrence in India to get all the shops selling a certain item in the same location: all the bangle shops together on one street, all the dress material shops together on one street, all the paper shops together on one street, etc.) I have a favorite bangle shop where they sell plane bangles for 20/- a dozen (that’s about 25p or $0.40). They also sell sparkly ones for 30/- a dozen and fancier ones with gold for about 80/- a dozen. Bangles are traditionally made of glass, but they also come in plastic and metal.