Akshay Considers Office Fashion in Mumbai

1 comments

The relative heterogeneity of India is a significant cultural advantage. To an Indian, the rest of the world is just more India. The same is the case in my office. I do not think of it as strange to hear a language I don't quite understand being used in fluent excess in the office, actually it's quite the norm (two Bengali girls keep on jabbering among themselves in the lunch break, they pronounce my name not as AAkshhay but as OOkshayy). Also this is the reason the egg-free cake is ordered, even though a majority of us in the office eat egg. At last count 8 languages are spoken among 10 people in my office - English, Hindi, Bengali, Kannada, Punjabi, Gujarati, Tamil & Marathi. Ironically a foreign language, English, is the uniting factor.

In the last few months I've been making a conscious effort to think beyond what Indians think is mundane and explore the margins through a microscope. Formal clothing for Men here is pretty boring, restricted to the universal corporate uniform. As for women it's a totally different equation - their definition of formal is much wider and encompassing. On Monday, Suhani wore a salwar kameez, on tuesday a radically different formal white shirt and a navy blue skirt [we had meeting], and on Wednesday to salwar kameez again to Thursday a fashionable kurti and a churidar, to a casual Friday where she carried away some jeans and a top.