Karma Chameleon

When my friend Anjalika threw a party to usher in springtime - the festival is called "Holi Hai" in India (Anjalika's family is from New Delhi) - well, I knew just what to wear. Aside from the clean white shirt (which gets rainbow-colored with pigment powders and squirt guns filled with colored water as the day goes on), I wore my sari.

Oh yeah, of course I have a sari.

When I was in my 20s, I became a bit of a cultural chameleon. I bought this sari in Little India (Artesia) during my Bollywood phase, when I wore bindis to nightclubs and painted my eyes with kohl. I also had an Asiaphile phase in which I wore my mandarin-colored silk pajama jacket over a t-shirt and jeans to dim sum in Chinatown. And you know about my Italy fixation, and I'm sure I'll catch some Francophilia and Barceloneliness while I'm in Europe this summer.

But, even though I had the right thing to wear, I didn't know how to put it on. Anjalika's poor mum had to fold it up and wrap me like a Mumbai burrito!