Sunday 13 December 2009

Letter from India

It is hot and sultry and beautiful. But after reading my emails, I am a little bit homesick and very heartsick for JFK (who is currently giving Japan a good shake on the design front).
What can I tell you about the way westerners dress in Goa, other than it is almost always either awful or nothing special.
Of course there are some beautiful fabrics here and the local women look amazing, especially when they dress up, but the westerners just look like old hippies. Even the young ones. I'll try and take some photos when no-one is looking to illustrate my point, if I can bring myself to inflict such a visual on you.
For someone who isn't really into wearing colour, there isn't a huge amount of choice but there is a lot of beautiful buttery linen which I might get made into something if I have any money left (unlikely).
For the moment I am attempting to hide away in my books - I'm swotting up to write something a bit meaty so am immersing myself in some serious female diarists with Nancy Mitford and Anita Loos for when it all just gets a bit too much. Reading Nancy Mitford does something funny to my vocabulary though.
I am still recovering from my rotten cold, so I can't smell much, but I think the way holidays smell, and therefore the perfume you wear while on them, is very important. My cold city perfume of choice, Stella, simply doesn't cut it and I don't want to smell like London.
Being unable to smell anything and also being in a bit of a rush to catch the plane made sniffing around in duty free a little out of the question.
But having recently finished consuming Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez's Perfumes, The A-Z Guide (recommended to me by writer, wit and perfume conoisseur Michael Bywater), I decided to trust them and buy something I have never smelt before but is apparantly a timeless classic of the kind they don't really make anymore.
Which is how I now come to be in a marble floored internet cafe in Goa surrounded by an aura of Guerlain's Mitsouko. Which, it turns out, is a better perfume for a hot and sultry holiday than I could possibly have hoped for.
It also doesn't blend too badly with the mosquito repellent.

1 comment:

  1. Your story and post is looking very interesting point of the nature you have. I can understand it but some sickness for home is everybody having. But I can say the part of waiting for home and enjoying feeling from apart from them is very different and enjoyable too...

    kartÄ™ r4i

    ReplyDelete