Silk, Sweat and Saffron – Singapore/Little India – [03/19/2012]

I would normally save the title for Bombay, since the phrase “silk, sweat and saffron” really is India, if you could sum India up in a phrase. But Singapore happened to come first on the itinerary, and I needed to pick up a petticoat to wear under my sari, so it was that my self-declared big brother (and I can hear my ‘real’ big brother bristling at the assumption of the title from here – calm yourself Amras, you’ve not been replaced!) boarded the Singapore metro and headed down the track to Little India.

I had never been anywhere in Singapore except for Sentosa Island, since that’s where Universal Studios resides – so I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I had been told though, that Little India was precisely that, a miniature version of an entirely different country.

Never has a description been more accurate.

From the moment we climbed the steps of the metro station it was as if we had been transported into a tiny section of Bombay. Fruit and flower stalls lining every street, and incense pouring from every shop. There is a scent to India, some people find it unpleasant, but I find it heady. It’s a combination of incense and perfume and spices that permeates the air and clings to your skin long after you’ve departed any shop, and unlike the masma that hung over our various ports in Brazil, this one doesn’t come close to churning your stomach.

What struck me most of all though, and what always does, is the colours. Colours shout from every shop window, every corner, and every person. I still hold that there is no more beautiful garment out there than a well-worn Sari, if a piece of fabric can be said to have elegance, the Sari has it.

Much to my complete amazement, I discovered that I knew how to shop for a sari, or rather I knew how to help a guy shop for one. The friend I was with wanted to buy one for his girlfriend, at first he was eyeing one of the super formal ones, the kind they hang above the doors to draw people in all glitz and bling and weighing I don’t know how much. I took one look at it and shook my head

Let me see a picture of her? Yeah, see, with her skin tone and her build? You’re going to want to go with something dark… something in chiffon or light silk.

Why…?

Slim build in raw silk doesn’t hang right, trust me, go with chiffon. And with all that embroidery? Not only does that affect the cost, but the more bling, the more weight, a sari is a *lot* of fabric, it’s already heavy, you don’t to weigh her down with all that.

We didn’t find anything in the end, but at least he got a general idea of what to look for, there was one that would have been perfect, but was ever so slightly out of the price range. Okay, a lot out of price range.

There are worse ways to spend a day than wondering around in a culture that’s completely foreign to your own. At least in Singapore’s version of India the streets are only crowded with cars, not animals, bicycles, pedestrians and tuk-tuks.

I was deeply tempted by the incense for sale. But anything that can be burned is forbidden on the ship, and it’s not worth the risk.

I took IPM in both ports in Bombay, because the past year had tainted my memory of India, making me remember the poverty and the confusion of the streets. I was very nervous about getting lost in Bombay, but today reminded me of the incredible beauty of the culture itself. One that I keep meaning to learn more about.

Today, standing in the sari shop, bargaining and debating amongst lengths of midnight blue and emerald green and all the colours of the rainbow, I suddenly was struck by just how amazing my life has become. Who would have thought a few years ago, that the girl who once worked behind a hardware store counter, and lived paycheque to paycheque to put herself through school, would become the woman who knew how to shop for a sari in the middle of a completely foreign country?

I may still live paycheque to paycheque – though granted not as much as I once did – but I suppose at heart, I was never really meant to be a shop girl.