pbk: barbie in a saree

I was killing time earlier waiting for some minor adjustments to be done to my new kameez tops (more on this below) when I discovered the perfect mascot for my desk at the San Francisco office.

Allow me to quote from the back of the box. All spellings are [sic]:

Barbie is breathtakingly beautiful in her Indian avtaar. Dressed in colourful sarees, complete with bindi and ethnic jewellery, she's out to steal your heart. She symbolises the values that are so intrinsic to any Indian. Truly, a picture of traditional Indian beauty.

Waitasec, she symbolises the values that are so intrinsic to any Indian? Because she's wearing some lame bangles and has a completely unrealistic body under that saree? She comes with her own little hand mirror, by the way. Whatever, people.

The guy was trying to push the deluxe Rajasthani Barbie on me, but I demurred. Then just now when I was looking for a photo of that one to show you, the first hit was a site selling one for $149.00. I don't know what the one I saw today cost, but the one I bought was something like $12.50 so I'd be surprised if the fancy one was more than twice or thrice that. Maybe I need to get my ass back down to the mall and then hit eBay.

This round of salwar kameez purchasing has not been entirely without incident. The ones from the first shop were supposed to be couriered (that is the fancy way they say "delivered" here) to my office on Friday, but they did not show up. So I tried calling the number on the receipt and it said it wasn't available. So I went down to the shop where I bought the fabric (the sewing is done elsewhere, hence the couriering), and the SHOP HAD CHANGED NAMES AND OWNERS SINCE LAST SATURDAY. I walked in and walked out again first, thinking "Oh wait, this isn't the shop, it must be down the block a bit." Except no, it was the shop. And yet also not the shop. But they got the woman from last week on the phone for me and she assured me that the clothes were almost done, it would just take till Wednesday. Hey, it's India. They claim things will take "six minutes" even when they will take three hours. So when they say it will take a whole week, well, I'll let you do the math (since, as Barbie in India might say, "Math is hard!").

Anyway, so then I went to the other shop to pick up my other order, and it was indeed ready. The fanciest shirt, though, had a dark spot near the hem. The owner assured me it would come out at the dry cleaners (at which point I thought to myself, "The whosit now? They have dry cleaners here?"). I went home and I could not get the spot out with regular soap, so I laundered the top with detergent and that didn't help either. In the meantime I had tried on the other tops and discovered that they needed to be let out across the chest (you know, because of my bodacious B-cup rack), so then I figured I'd go back to the shop for that and also pick up some real live stain remover while I was out.

(Y'all are probably wondering why I didn't return the stained shirt and demand they fix it. I know, I know, that's what I should have done. But I am so confrontation-averse that I find it preferable to either get the stain out myself somehow or just live with it--it's not all that noticeable.)

Here's a photo of the stained kameez dripping dry in my shower. The stain remover worked somewhat but not completely, so for now I have given up on further improvement. Maybe I will take it to a cleaner in the U.S., where it is less likely to end up being beaten against a rock in some putrid alley.