India Continued: Suits and parties

Tuesday was officially the first (of three) days of the wedding. However, since the festivities didn’t start until the evening, Geno and I decided to check out the local custom-made suit market. Since every suit I’ve ever bought in the US (a grand total of 2 in my life) had a “Made in India” tag, it seemed like it would be a good buy to buy some right at the source. We got recommendations on where to go from Josh and headed down to check out the goods.

Our destination – Sehgal Brothers, aka The Blues – was in South Extension Part 1. Our rickshaw driver confirmed he knew the location and we headed down in search of some new clothes. South Extension is basically two long strip malls on opposite sides of a major street – one side is “Part 1” and the other “Part 2”. We were dropped of on one side, which our driver confirmed was Part 1. We walked around looking all over for the store to no avail. Of course the temperature was hot and muggy so we had to augment our trip with an ice cream from McDonalds – which promptly melted before I could get to the bottom. After a good chunk of time searching we finally found out we were in Part 2 – on the wrong side of the road. The rickshaw driver obviously didn’t want to drive us the extra 0.5 km necessary to turn around to get to Part 1. We played a live game of Frogger and made it across the street and (finally) found our store.

We asked for the custom tailored suit section and were whisked to a back room on the top floor. Sehgal Bros. was one of the high end establishments in town so the cloth they had was all high quality Italian fabric. Their store carried basically all the high end brands – Versace, Gucci, Valentino, Trussardi, etc – so was a little intimidating to walk in. I was worried I wouldn’t even be able to afford a shirt there. As it turned out the prices were good. The fabric itself wasn’t significantly cheaper than US prices but, because the labor costs of getting the suits stitched was so cheap, the total cost of the suit ended up being at least 50% of what a similar suit (not even custom tailored) bought in the US would cost.

Geno had gone through the custom-tailored suit process before, but the process was all new to me. The back room was full of reams of different cloth. We would describe the type of suits we wanted. Two guys would scour the wall of fabric and pull off ream after ream. Geno and I would categorize the reams into “good”, “maybe” or “only a blind moose would wear that”. My plan was to get one dark business suit and another lighter summer suit to add to my current collection of one dark wool suit. As we went through the whole process I added another dark suit for a total of three suits making the sales staff that much happier. Geno added two suits to his collection and the store gave us a decent discount (after some haggling on our part) for purchasing a total of 5 suits from them. They then took our measurements and style requirements (single breast, 4 buttons on sleeve, etc). I had just increased the total number of suits I own by 400%. I figure as an MBA, chances are high that eventually I’ll have to wear a suit – I might as well purchase while the prices are low and quality is high. As it turned out, I got a bit carried away and added 5 custom tailored shirts and 4 ties to my 3 suits. Many of my female friends would be proud. Now I almost feel obligated to get a corporate suit-wearing job … almost.

The store was split between 2 buildings so after we were measured for the suits we went to the other building where we picked out fabrics and were measured for dress shirts that matched the fabric of our new suits. Finally we were finished with part I of our suit buying experience. We flagged down a rickshaw to head back to B-block, CR Park and the typical driving around in circles while the lost rickshaw driver asked directions over and over again.

The previous day the all the white people went to Fab India – a local clothing store specializing in traditional Indian clothing. I brought some dress clothes with me for the wedding, but opted to buy some traditional clothes for the Tuesday evening part of the wedding. I bought a red striped kurta and some white pajama pants (note: the word “pajama” comes from a similar Persian word meaning “leg garment” so these were not the plaid/superhero-type pajamas Westerners are accustomed to). The whole batch cost me something around $10 so it was worth it – at the very least for something cool to wear.

Day I of the wedding was at Josh’s parent’s house. The house had a large deck area where they built a tent. Adjacent to the tent area was a large common room where the rest of the festivities took place. Day one was basically for family and close friends – meaning about 75 people. They brought in some Rajasthani singers for some traditional song and dance. They consisted of a couple dancers – including a boy in a horse costume – a harmonium, drums and a couple singers. I really liked the harmonium instrument. It’s basically a pedal pumped organ and used fairly extensively in Indian music. Afterwards the party moved under the deck with a DJ, caterers, and more dancing. I think I sweat off about 5 pounds during the party from all the dancing and the muggy evening heat. My new Indian clothes were ready for the laundry.

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