Bangle Story

HYDERABAD, INDIA
January 2003

I went, when I first got Hyderabad, India, to the Laad Bazaar in the ancient part of the city near the mosque and the four minarets of the Char Minar. For hundreds of years Hyderabad has been known for two things: pearls and thin glass bangle bracelets.

A man at the bazaar put the bangles on my wrists on both arms. Like a man charming a snake, he kept his eyes focused on my face while his hands kneaded my hands and maneuvered the bangles over my wide western palms, until I had 15 green bangles on the right and 23 pink bangles on the left.

I loved the bangles; they were beautifully glittery and tinkly. The women I was training were impressed on the first day. The second day, they told me about the bangle crimes I was committing: the colors should be interspersed with each other so both wrists matched, these were party bangles not to be worn every day, the colors should match my clothes. I like wearing the bangles though despite the cultural errors, and despite the way my arms looked like they had casts on when I wore a long sleeved blouse, and despite the fact that it was hard to wear a watch. I noticed my arms moved sensuously with bangles on them.

By the third day, they became a burden. I wore my bangles swimming, which looked absurd. Glitter chipped off them and got all over the bed and my clothes. Sleeping meant being mindful of bangles. Showering with delicate glass on my arms, typing with breakable glass on my arms, became dangerous. I wanted them gone, but they wouldn't come off, not without shattering.

The women said they would help. A dozen of us crowded into the bathroom, so many that we spilled out into the hallway, and the men from the class got curious about this crowd of women; I could see in the mirror their heads bobbing above the women’s, trying to find out what was taking place inside. The women lathered liquid soap on my hands and squeezed my thumbs to my palms, worried about cuts and stabs from the glass, and pulled and pulled until the bangles nearly came off, and then they broke, glass flying into the sinks and onto floor. They argued, in loud Hindi, over whether bangles should be removed in pairs or three at a time; one at a time, they all agreed, would guarantee they would snap under the pressure of a hand unnaturally squeezed.

And then Geeta, serene Geeta, glided in past the men and the rest of the crowd, and asked why there was a problem. All the women started talking at once, explaining the situation, but she merely looked at me, and held my hand lightly and said only this: relax. And she slipped all the bangles on my right wrist off like magic, one after the other after the other.

Then she tried the left ones. As she slid the first one onto my hand, it broke. But she said: now your muscles will know how to move, and they did, and those also slipped off like magic, one by one by one.