Pardesi_Issue1_AnnanyaDoshi

More in this magazine

• Cover
• Page 2Ever since birth, an Indian girl is fed various versions of why she should wear a particular style of clothing. A clothing that society calls "respectable." Long sleeved. Full jeans. Hell, she needed to disregard the fact that it was 33 degrees outside. I am that Indian girl. I always found comfort in being covered; not because it was something I voluntarily adapted to myself, but because of the expectation of society. Because of the watching. Because of the way a hemline could become a conversation, a sleeveless top could become a rumor, and a girl's clothing could somehow say everything about her character and nothing about the weather.
• HANDMADE KILIMRUG PILLOWCOVERS13
• What I BroughtThe editor's letter the clothes that came with me First Winter - what happened when I arrived The Carry-On - two looks, one girl What Didn't Make It - the inventory
• ContentsWhat I Left The version of me that never questioned her wardrobe The assumption that covered meant comfortable The girl my colony knew
• Packed on instinct ghar se /ghar se/phrase, Hindi-UrduCotton kurta, worn every day at home.
• Page 7She never thought of it as a style. It was just what getting dressed looked like.
• FIRST WINTER | first winter/forst 'winter/ noun, colloquialWhat happened to what we wore when we arrived. 1. the season in which everything familiar becomes insufficient 2. among Indian students abroad the period in which one's wardrobe, sense of self, and understanding of visibility are quietly, permanently rearranged
• Page 9Rhea Nair arrived from Bangalore in September with what she describes as a deliberately curated wardrobe. She had thought about this, she explains. She had watched videos, read articles, consulted a cousin who had done her masters in Boston three years earlier. She was going to do this consciously. She was not going to lose herself. She packed fifty percent Indian clothes and fifty percent what she called, at the time, her New York clothes; pieces she had bought in Bangalore specifically for this move. Western cuts, muted colours, nothing that would make her stand out.
• Page 10Between the three of them, Priya, Anika, and Rhea have brought to New York fourteen salwar kameez, eleven kurtis, seven dupattas, four pairs of Indian footwear, and enough bangles and jhumkas to fill a small jewellery box. Between the three of them they currently wear these things, on average, twice a month; at cultural events, at Diwali, at moments that feel like they require it.
• Page 11She didn't lose herself. She just started dressing for a version of herself she was still getting to know.
• Page 12Cotton kurta - brought from home. Dupatta - her mother's. Juttis Janpath Market, Delhi, 2023.
• Page 13The Carry On She couldn't bring everything. She brought herself twice. carry-on /'kæri ¤n/ noun
• Page 14inventory/'Invǝntri/ noun 1. a complete list of items such as property, goods in stock, or the contents of a building What Didn't Make It An inventory of the left behind.
• 8. Sindoor DibbiMy mother slipped it in at the last minute. For good luck, she said.
• Page 16Priya, on the last time she wore Indian clothes in New York It was her roommate's birthday. (Indian-themed, ironically)
• Page 1788 in between /In bi'twi:n/ adjective, phrase thing nor th
• MANHATTANNYT Book Review
• beth/and both/and/boʊe and/phrase1. a way of thinking that holds two seemingly opposite truths at once, rather than forcing a choice between them 2. in practice: jhumkas with a hoodie; mehndi under a flannel sleeve; kolhapuris with straight- leg jeans. nothing separated. nothing performed. just what felt right that morning.
• Page 20She came home. Home had questions about her wardrobe too. going back /'goʊiŋ bæk/phrase
• Page 21At the actual celebration, my cousin asked if I'd "become very firang" ― very foreign – because of how I was standing, how I'd tucked my dupatta, something in the way I said hello to our uncles. I laughed it off. I thought about it for the rest of the night. Here is the thing nobody prepares you for: you assume the hard part is becoming someone new somewhere new. Nobody tells you that going back doesn't undo it. You don't get to return to the girl who left. She's not in that wardrobe anymore. She's somewhere in between New York and Mumbai, still being assembled, and home – the actual physical place, the actual closet, the actual mother laying out three choices on the bed is just as confused by the new version of you as you are. I wore the salwar kameez. I tucked the dupatta the way my mother showed me when I was twelve. And for one evening, standing among family who had known me my whole life, I felt, for the first time since August, completely unsure of who exactly was standing in those clothes.
• Page 22She packed two lives into one suitcase.
• Page 23tur YC Arch
• Page 24Pardesi for the girl still standing in front of her wardrobe. Issue 01, Fall 2026