Lingering Over Lingerie

There is nothing sadder in the whole world than having stashes of gorgeous,lacy black lingerie, saved up for a long-awaited occasion that never seems toarrive. There is a deep reluctance to ferret out any of it merely for daily use.And on the rare occasions you wear some, entertaining possibilities, perhaps alate night out -- when you wash it and carefully put it back (in the cornerreserved for pretty foreign lingerie, not to be trespassed upon by the daily,sensible, unlacy stuff), it is always with shoulders bowed with defeat.

My collection grew largely out of my lingerie explorations in Paris. Partly,it was to do with an awakening sense of the beauty of my body, which I hadscarcely regarded at length, let alone admired, before Europe radicallytransformed some of my perspectives. And it felt nice complementing my body withall kinds of sweet-nothings in satin and lace.

But, to be honest, it was also partly because I was under oath. A closefriend, who swore by St Michael, had made me promise that I would treat myselfto his latest line. I mean, I can appreciate Benedictine, that divine liqueurapparently made to the recipe of monks of the St Benedict order. But St Michaellingerie? Is he the patron saint of bras and panties? And if not, don't thesesaints have veto powers or something? The most liberal saints might draw theline at pushing undies, but I didn't get the feeling that Western civilisationwas unduly troubled by such niceties.

So one day I braced myself for an Undie Mission. I've never been comfortablebuying underwear. This has largely to do with the fact that, for some reasonthat remains an eternal mystery, women's underwear shops in India are almostinvariably manned by men. And not men who will ask you your size in a discreetwhisper. They are usually large, swarthy men with hairy bear paws for hands,their shirt buttons open half-way down to their sweaty navels, since they mostlyfunction out of tiny, airless shops in enormously crowded shopping complexes.(Here we're discounting those peripatetic vendors who throng outside railwaystations like Victoria Terminus or Dadar in Bombay, with cheap, radioactively-colouredbras dangling from the tips of their umbrella ribs, a sort of kitschy bramobilethat, in England, would be instantly given the Turner Prize).

When you look around in one of the regular shops a bit, the shopkeeper leansover semi-leerily and bellows, "Kya number?" (What number?) You stareat your toes as you mumble, "Size 30." "Kya? Thirty?" hesneers. "Thirty!? Dekhna padega." (What? 30!? We'll have to see.)Then, looking up at a face in a hole in the mezzanine loft above, he shouts,"Arre, zara 30 hai to phekna." (Hey, throw me a 30 if you can findit). He employs the same functional volume and tone he would use, if the wanteda basket of fish heaved across to him. Given your luck, the guy in the leftannounces slyly, "30 running item nahin hai na, to companyne banana chhoddiya. 32 try karoge?" (30 isn't a running item, no, so the company'sstopped making it. Want to try a 32?) Before you can answer, 32s come rainingdown in yellowing cardboard boxes. As several lady customers clucksympathetically at the luckless size 30er, you just want to disappear in a holein the ground.

I imagine men buying condoms at the chemist's feeling likewise. Sure, theremust be those who look chermists straight in the eye, thump the counter glassand demand an Ecstasy or whatever.But many Indian men, I believe, first buy adisarming Vicks Inhaler or Iodex, and casually add that they'd like a pack ofKohinoor, eyes glued to some fascinating new Bandaid shapes under the counterglass. The chemist turns to his minion in the left and roads, "ArreKohinoor pheko" (Hey, throw me a Kohinoor). The minion shouts, "Kohinoorkhatam. Climax ya Dream Baby chalega?" (We are out of Kohinoors. WillClimax or Dream Baby do?)

"No, no," the customer squirms, "How much for the Vicks?"Whereupon the minion sweetly twists the knife in the wound, "Bolo teenDream baby liya to free plastic razor milega." (Tell him, with three dreamBaby packs, he will get a plastic razor free.) Only to find that the beetrootcustomer has vanished without collecting his change for Rs. 100 for a stupidinhaler he didn't want in  the first place. But I digress.

So there I was, at the enormous Printemps department store in the heart ofParis, discovering that I couldn't just walk in and buy a bra. They had anentire overwhelming floor devoted to lingerie. At its entrance, stood thepresenter of a TV show -- apparently sponsored by a lingerie company -- givingaway free bras during an on-the-spot quiz for shoppers, asking such nail-bitingquestions as, "And 'oo is the president of France. madame?" Suddenly,he turned towards me. I stood transfixed for a few seconds, before dashing downthe elevator. If I felt squeamish as a woman, having to buy underwear fromcreepy crawlies back in India. Paris, the sophisticated hub of the lingerieuniverse, was no different -- its lingerie pushers were brasher than any thatmade me turn beetroot in India.

I returned when the coast was clear, and was hugely relieved to noticesaleswomen behind the counters. Moreover, coming from Bombay, where you would belucky to find a handful of bras that would interest you, this was some kind ofmind-boggling Bratopia. They had bras that were lacy, satiny, cottony, nylony,velvety, mono-coloured, skin-coloured, fluorescent, floral, polka-dotted,see-through, high-cut, low-cut, bikini-cut, halter-necked, strappy, strapless,cross-strapped, stretchable and with sponge padding. There were Wonderbras, Day-globras, baby-nursing bras, sports bras...If I'd looked keenly, I'm certain I wouldhave found cooking bras, swimming bras, lawn-mowing bras, kid's homework bras,Sunday service bras, first-night out bras, one-night stand bras,to-hell-with-him bras and don't-need-men-in-my-life bras.

Each bra was tagged with tons of literature about `lift' and `supports' and`suspension', making something so delicately private sound rather like astructural engineers tender for a steel bridge across a gorge. Very un-French, Ithought. Indeed, the French, who have gifted the world the world `brassiere'.themselves refer to it in the most unromantic fashion as `soutien-gorge'(support-bosom).

For me, the bra is an extremely personal garment, and the very notion ofhaving a man choose it for me makes me blush violently. But I spotted an Indianman shopping earnestly amidst the lingerie prairie. He seemed a middle-agedBengali bureaucrat at the end of his Paris posting, and an anticipatory smilelit up his face now and then, as he imagined his wife's delighted squeals at hisoutre choices. It was a lovely divertissement, listening to him speak fluentFrench with a thick Bengali accent, as he demanded to see more varieties in size36 with C cups and black lace. Stretching the bras this way and that to checkthat they worked, he triumphantly wheeled out a large trolleyful.

The general attitude of the men in the room seemed to be, that the only reasonwomen would visit the lingerie department of a Parisian store, was to appearsexy to their men in bed, so it was a complete waste of time bothering with whatthe women liked. There were Arab women in black burqas, whose husbandsmatter-of-factly imposed their own choices, by the simple expedient of taking aclutch of shiny things to the salesgirl and asking her to make the bill.Naturally, when the six-foot, blond Scandinavian hunk, burping his baby,casually wandered into the women's trial cabins looking for his wife - with hisWonderbra suggestions dangling over his free shoulder - the two Arab women boldenough to try on their own preferences, screamed blue murder.

At the end of a long afternoon, hugely entertained by the clash ofcivilisations in bradom, I eventually felt obliged to look for a bra for myself.I told the salesgirl I wasn't sure of the European equivalent of my size, so shedespatched me to the Senior Bra Advisor. The old lady took one glance at mybreasts, announced 30AA or 32A with impressive assurance, and jotted it down forme in a little ivory card marked Personally Yours. I thought her eyebrows hadarched just a tad too rudely as she made her pronouncement, but I wasn't sure ifit technically qualified as a sneer. I suspect people all over the world arecondescending towards size 30, and Paris was no exception. I've never discoveredhow other women seem to go from being unprepossessing teenagers, directly tosize 36 without ever passing 30, going by the mini-rack you see in 30 andfloorfuls you see in 36. It always reminds me of that move when you playMonopoly, which goes something like `Do not stop. Proceed directly to PiccadillyCircus. Collect 20 pounds.'

Mercifully, they had some really charming confections in size 30. Each StMichael bra I bought had a silky tag with UK/Can 32A, Eur 70A, Fr 85A attachedto it. My bra size sounded vastly more impressive in French, though why itshould be reduced to less than half by simply travelling from Paris to an islandthree Chunnel hours away, was beyond me. I was even foggier about how I could beone size in Fr and another size in Eur, but geography was never my strong point,and I supposed Senior Bra Advisors were paid fat salaries to crack preciselythese mysterious algorithms of bra sizes.

I bought armfuls of lingerie at Printemps, and even more later, in otherEuropean capitals. As the lacy stash rises in my cupboard, I linger over it nowand then, expectation welling in my heart.

(Meenakshi Shedde, Assistant Editor and Film Critic of The Times ofIndia, Bombay, won the National Award for Best Film Critic of 1998. She hasserved on the juries of several international film festivals in India andEurope, including Cannes, Berlin, Oberhausen, Hannover and Mumbai. She hascontributed to a book And Who Will Make the Chapatis? This is an extractfrom a travel book she is writing.)