The Dupatta Diaries

A sampling from my local "Dupatta Lending Library"

A recent article in the L.A. Times unearthed yet another specimen in the Western media’s lifelong obsession with the head coverings of Eastern women–the dupatta (pronounced “doo-PUTT-ah”).

A long, rectangular, often translucent, and highly decorated piece of fabric worn by Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims alike in South Asia, the dupatta is a far cry from its Middle Eastern–and strictly Muslim–cousin, the hijab.  Unlike the hijab, which is usually opaque, closely wrapped, and designed to reveal not one lock of hair on its wearer’s head, the dupatta finds itself draped on a woman’s body in myriad ways, as the L.A. Times’ Mark Magnier, reporting from Pakistan, explains:

In the course of a day, an urban Pakistani woman may switch roles from entrepreneur to ingenue to pious daughter, in keeping with this country’s nuanced and often-contradictory sense of self. The dupatta, which can be wrapped tightly around the head, left on the shoulders, hung from the side or dropped altogether, helps in navigating these social shoals.

As an urban, 2nd generation Pakistani-American woman, I heartily agree with Magnier’s astute observation about this transformative piece of fabric. Life can be tough in the teeming metropolis, and there’s nothing like having a pashmina security blanket at your side to help define your identity at a moment’s notice (Now at least we’re clear on the purpose of Superman’s cape.)

Except that my dupattas often find themselves in situations more mundane than the politically charged ones Magnier and others like blogger Kalsoom of CHUP (changing up Pakistan) describe. Instead of hoisting my duputtas on flagpoles, I often substitute them for picnic blankets should I find myself sitting on a damp lawn or use them as oversized handkerchiefs during cold season. (Such disclosures were designed specifically to dissuade certain readers from treating my closet like a dupatta lending library. You know who you are!)

That said, I don’t mean to deny the political charge of the headscarf and the real trauma that women experience from being either forced to wear one or banned from wearing one.

I just want to dislodge the dupatta, and women’s head covering in general, from the current debate in which it finds itself: the clash of Islamic and Western civilizations.

The duputta is in fact a part of a much broader sartorial and cultural context. It is one element in a 3-piece outfit called the shalwar kameez, which hails from the Punjab province straddling India and Pakistan. Partnering with the other players in this ensemble–a knee-length tunic and baggy trousers–the duputta generally signifies modesty, respect, and a woman’s honor. For example, and this plays out in Bollywood iconography, for someone to strip off forcefully a woman’s duputta would be akin to rape. While a woman’s brazen refusal to wear it in front of elders and in religious spaces would be regarded as outright disrespect.

Both these meanings of the duputta limit its societal role to being an instrument of control and revolt, an “either/or” logic that mirrors the current media debate on headcovering. If you wear it you’re subjugated by tradition; if you don’t, you’re a liberated modern woman spitting in the face of your forefathers.

But if you listen to South Asian music, you get a different picture.

In the songs sampled below, many of which are Bollywood and Pakistani pop-reworkings of Punjabi folk music, the dupatta is, at its most literal, the veil separating a woman from her lover. In the windy Punjab river plains, the dupatta threatens to fly off her body at any moment, with a Cupid-like breeze enabling the affair. In this guise, particularly within the frame of Bollywood cinema, the dupatta cannot help but serve as an instrument to seduce the voyeuristic listener/viewer. But at the end of the day, it is the woman, traditionally the beloved in lyric poetry, who voices the plaint of the forsaken lover, using her scarf as a semaphore whose colors, fabrics, and positioning on her body communicate her emotional and mental state.

Perhaps the “lyric of the dupatta” can help us see how gendered sartorial markers such as the dupatta and the hijab allow women to express themselves in way words can’t.

Here’s my audio homage to the women of the cloth and the fabric of their lives: “The Dupatta Mashup.”

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