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Chadori Tales
Taran Khan
IndiaGALLERYCONVERSATION
Within seconds, the atmosphere in the room changed to electric excitement and stories poured out, words tripping over words in...
“You don’t buy a chadori every day. It costs about five to six hundred Afghanis for a piece, and I’m talking about the ordinary ones, not one of your fancy coloured pieces. It lasts for at least four or five years, more if you’re careful. Depends on how often you wear it too, of course. Some of us wear them just for certain mehfils (gatherings), or to weddings, or to visit some relatives who are like ‘that’.
“I like that their colour is blue, but I don’t like the way they make me look broad, and that they are pleated. Abroad they have smarter styles, with more colours available and with better fitting. Those make you look good. During the Taliban years some women would celebrate Eid or festivals by buying new chadoris rather than new clothes, since that was what you saw first of their appearance.
The chadori of Afghanistan is called the shuttlecock burqa in India, the country of its alleged origin, because of its resemblance to the badminton shuttle. Though its popularity has now waned in the Indian heartland, in its glory days the shuttlecock starred in several Hindi films of the post-Independence era referred to as Muslim socials.
Looking through a viewfinder in Kabul, the blue shuttlecock chadoris appear as a splash of colour against a uniformly dust coloured background. Perhaps that is one of the reasons they are so often photographed. Images of women from various veiled angles and in telling postures of invisibility have hung in hushed exhibition halls and ‘spaces’ across the world, even in Kabul itself.
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