Textiles and clothing in India
Silk is usually a good buy in India, provided you make sure it is the real thing (the old test was to see whether it was possible to pull the whole garment straight through a wedding ring; however, some synthetics apparently go through too, so burn a thread and sniff it to be sure). Though Varanasi silk is world famous, the best nowadays comes from Kanchipuram and Madurai in Tamil Nadu; silk from Mysore is also prized but has recently had a bad press due to accusations concerning child labour. Textiles are so much a part of Indian culture that Gandhi wanted a spinning wheel put on the nationai flag. The kind of cloth he had in j mind was the plain white homespun material worn by Nehru, whose hat, jacket and dhoti remain a mark of support for the Congress Party to this day. Homespun, handloom-woven hand-printed cloth is called khadi, and is sold in the government shops called Khadi Gramodyog that are I found all over India. Methods of dyeing and printing this and other cloth vary from the tie-dyeing (bhandam) of Rajasthan to block printing and screen printing of calico (from Calicut - now Kozhikode, Kerala) cotton, and of silk. Saris are normally made of cotton for everyday use, although silk is used for special occasions, and quite common in the south. Western women are notoriously inept at wearing this most elegant of garments - it takes years of practice to carry one properly.
Other popular fabrics include the heavy mirror-embroidered cloth of Rajasthan, Bengali baluchari brocade, and Indonesian-style ikat and batik from Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, while clothing to take home includes lunghis in the south (as much sheets as garments), thick Tibetan sweaters from Darjeeling, and salwar kamise, the elegant pyjama suits worn by Muslim women, with trousers (pyjamas) of various styles. Long loose shirts - preferably made of khadi, and known as kurta or panjabi are practical in the heat of India, and traditionally worn, by men, with white pyjamas. Tourist shops sell versions in various fabrics and colours. Block-printed bed-sheets, as well as being useful, make good wall-hangings, as do Punjabi phulkari (origi¬nally wedding sheets), but every region has its own fabrics and its own methods of colouring them and making them up - the choice is endless. On top of this, with tailoring so cheap in India, you can choose the fabric you want, take it to a tailor, and have it made into whatever you fancy. For formal Western-style clothes, you’ll want to see quite a posh tailor in a big city, but tailors in almost every village in the country can run you up a shirt or a pair of pyjama-type trousers in next to no time. Many tailors will also copy a gar¬ment you already have.