Clothing in Calcutta
In matters of dress we are very fortunate in India. People in peninsular, or southern, India, do not require any heavy winter clothing.
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From “Food and Dress” in When I Was A Boy In India by Satyananda Roy, 1923
In matters of dress we are very fortunate in India. People in peninsular, or southern, India, do not require any heavy winter clothing. Only those who live in the northern part of India, especially in the mountain regions on the border of the Himalayas, need heavy winter clothing.
In the plains, men, women, and children use light clothing almost all the year round, excepting in the two or three winter months when they use either heavy cotton or light woolen clothing.
During winter months, in Calcutta and other parts of northern India, we wear either a shawl or a woolen coat or shirt. The common dress consists of a piece of white cotton cloth, five yards by one and one-half yards.
This is folded round and fastened in the waist like a skirt. This piece of cloth may be either bordered with different colors or have no borders at all.
Girls and women wear cloth of the same material as the men. Some women prefer cloths with wider borders, and the men use the thinner borders only. Among the Hindus, older men and widows wear all-white cloths without any borders. In the case of the latter, this style of cloth serves as a mark of widowhood. On special occasions women wear colored cloths.
Silk dress is worn only on special occasions and at the time of worship. No head-dress (like turban, cap, or hat) is worn by the people of Bengal. It is a mistake to assume that all Hindus wear turbans. At least forty million people of Bengal do not wear any head-dress. Married women and widows use part of their garments in covering the head in a manner like that of the Hebrews of ancient times. Some of them draw it farther down so that it may serve as a veil also.
A kind of loose shirt (with wide or narrow sleeves) or a short coat called kortā (or jāmā) may be the second piece of clothing. The third piece is another small shirt of cotton measuring between two and three yards in length and between thirty and thirty-six inches in width. This is known as chudder or urāni. The first and the third are the two essential parts of a Bengali Hindu’s robe. They are seamless.
Leather shoes are worn mostly in cities. Many people wear half or full slippers without any socks. There are some who use socks in winter. Men use a special style of wooden sandal which has either a knob or a strap to hold the foot. The suit of clothes which the Hindus wear is
washed almost every day in cold water. Poor people wash their clothes three or four times a month with soap and water.
Only in cities people send their clothes to the laundry or “the washerman’s house,” as it is called in our part of India. There is no laundry run by the Chinese in India. The majority of the Chinese who live in India are either excellent carpenters or good shoemakers. Hindu women very seldom wear any shoes.
The Hindu housewife is not troubled with big washings every week, like the housewife in the States. In many homes self-help is practised as regards washing. Every adult member of the family washes his or her own clothing. Children’s clothing is taken care of by others. No machinery is used by washermen in India.
In recent years a large number of washermen’s agencies, which go by the name of laundry, have been introduced into Calcutta. In the country when people bathe in the tanks they either return to their homes wearing their wet clothes or change for a dry one at the bathing-ghāt (steps) .
Roy, Satyananda. When I Was A Boy In India. Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co., 1923.
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