As I sat in the stuffy hall, watching pretty faces and splashy colors of a predominantly female crowd, waiting for Act II to start, I heard a plump, bespectacled young woman exclaim during the intermission, “What cheap stuff! Such crude characters! And see how the people are enjoying it! Ach…”
I glanced at the high-brow, jet-set lady, her enormous bust and tawny neck. ‘Of course she doesn’t need a dupatta.’ With no ill-feeling towards her dupatta-less Raphaelesque presence, I smiled as I remembered one of Ismat Chughtai’s defiant characters – a young girl when told to wear a dupatta, kicked her feet in anger, grimaced and blurted something to the effect (when her Amma couldn’t hear her): “I don’t need a dupatta. Only flat-chested girls need to wrap themselves up carefully in thick dupattas.”
Zeenat Hisam 