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.”

As I walked toward the bus stop at the corner of Vermont and 3rd, I spied something yellow–incidentally my favorite color–out of the corner of my eye. It was an envelope, curiously taped to the bus stand. And, no, it didn’t contain a mysterious white powder. But, what it lacked in biological hazards, it made up for in its promise of better days.

The envelope offered, in Spanish, a “work opportunity.” Surprisingly, the skeptic in me did not immediately dismiss the claim. Maybe it was my weakness for sunny hues or the assertive slant of the markered script; but I was a believer. How could I not be? I was a fiend for good design. I noted that this prospective employer could have opted for the standard practice of the casual advertiser: tacking bland, photocopied 8.5″ x 11″ pieces of paper mustachoed with rip-away contact information in coffee shops and grocery stores all over the city. But, no. This person had devised an ingenious method of delivering her message (envelope with cut-off flap), targeting a mobile bus population with an efficiently crafted offer of employment.

Once I had absorbed the inventiveness of the delivery mechanism, I found myself wanting to become the dynamic clip art silhouette at the top of the advertisement. Admiringly, I thought, “How sensible of him to don a wide-brimmed hat to shield himself from the California sun.”  Headed toward his future, this shadowed worker bounded over his “oportunidad,” speedily promoting each letter of the word from stumbling block to stepping stone. The sheer optimism of the ad was bound to attract the attention of even the most jaded bus traveler, who, on a daily basis, is accosted with mediocre, depressing media–everything from the mindless drone inside the bus of Transit TV (which may go the way of the dodo since declaring bankruptcy) to the innumerable billboards outside plugging the wonders of gastric band surgery. But I knew that this yellow envelope held no ordinary ad.

So just what sort of future did this paper receptacle hold? I finally mustered up the courage to peek inside and discovered that there were many jobs to be had in the thriving informal economic sector of street food. Long a tradition in the Mexican and Central American neighborhoods of Los Angeles, the street food economy is comprised of taco trucks, sausage carts, and quesadilla stands, a complex network of mobile eateries that The Daily Taco blog has dubbed the “taco industrial complex.”  And with last year’s Twitter-induced success of the Kogi Korean BBQ taco truck and the popularity of other foodie trucks that followed, the “taco lifestyle” has been embraced by every self-respecting hipster. (And lest those twenty-something hipsters forget their suburban roots, a number of food truck lots–the urban reworking of the mall food court–are opening in Los Angeles.)

What the success of these mainstream trucks seems to mean for the OG trucks dotting the ethnic communities of Los Angeles is a broader clientele base, more jobs, and, more importantly, more widespread acceptance of food prepared on a street corner near you.

Describing this sort of adaptation, in anything from economics to culture to art, is what this blog is about.

In the upcoming months, I hope to re-present the voices behind such traces of survival.