Indie Girl

one

Today, I would be meeting the woman whom I was convinced would change my life.

In approximately one hour and twenty-five minutes, Aaralyn Taylor would glide into our school’s assembly hall.

There, poised against a lectern at the Meadow Lake High School in Agoura, in the suburbs of Los Angeles, she would address the crowd about her experiences as the editor of Celebrity Style, the hottest celebrity and fashion magazine around. Then, after enrapturing her audience, she would wait to take questions.

I, of course, would ask the most insightful and thought-provoking ones. She wouldn’t be able to help noticing my profound intelligence. And then, as the crowd would start to disperse, she would signal to me to meet her in the foyer, and would proceed to tell me that I was the smartest fifteen-year-old she had ever met. I would reach into my Kate Spade striped canvas knockoff, from which hung a good-luck charm in the shape of the Hindu elephant god, Ganesha, and fish out a bright pink folder containing my pretend-reports from the catwalks, my perceptive analyses of recent runway events that I had seen on the Internet, if not in person. Aaralyn Taylor would then offer me the summer internship I had applied for at the magazine she had founded three years ago and that she had turned into a huge success.

Today, a beautiful March day when the chill of winter had passed and we were in the full bloom of spring, was going to be one I would never forget.

I turned once again to look at the clock.

"Indira! Are you paying attention?"

Mr. Fogerty, my chemistry instructor, was suddenly standing in front of me, his four-foot-five frame seeming even more stunted now that I was perched on a high, round stool.

Mass and mole relationships, he said, his small red nose covered with tiny whiteheads. It was your assigned reading last night. I take it you’re familiar with the chapter?

Yes, I lied. It was uncharacteristic of me. I always did my homework, even if it was sometimes at the very last minute, as I was buttering my toast at breakfast. My parents would have been mortified to learn that instead of poring over chemistry books the night before I had been rereading the last four issues of Celebrity Style, prepping for my life-altering exchange with Aaralyn today. As far as I was concerned, mass and mole could have been the name of a Guatemalan appetizer.

So let’s start with you then, he said, a look of smug satisfaction on his face. Perhaps, Indira, you can enlighten us as to the distinction between molecular mass and formula mass?

There was a lot that I didn’t like about Mr. Fogerty. But the fact that he insisted on calling me Indira was at the top of the list. Granted, it was the name I had been given at birth, the one that was inked on my birth certificate and on the crisp pages of my American passport. I might have been able to live with it if my last name was not Konkipuddi. It was such a mouthful that most people gave up midway. In elementary school, I had been teased mercilessly because of my odd-sounding last name, which was perfectly common in India. The other kids used to call me Conk and Conkers and Pudding. So I started calling myself Indie, as if in doing so I was helping them forget that I had such a cumbersome surname. Indie was short and sweet and memorable. It was what I called myself, who I felt I was.

When I had started complaining about how old-fashioned my first name was, my father told me that in deciding what to call his firstborn child, it had been his hope that I would embody all that he admired about his native land and the other Indira—Indira Gandhi—who once led it. He wanted me to be strong, virtuous, compassionate, intellectual.

And while he had originally wanted me to choose what he constantly would refer to as a noble profession—something in medicine or engineering or government—his views had started to change recently when his nephew Naresh had landed a six-figure job in New York in the digital media arena. Every time my father would speak to Naresh, my cousin would use terms like interfacing and multimedia.

Although my father had yet to fully understand what my cousin did exactly, the fact that Naresh was able to send a substantial amount of money to his parents in India every month, and had paid in cash for a loft in Soho, had convinced my father that there lay an entire world beyond the borders of law and the sciences, the kind of vocations that he and other Indian parents had always held in the highest esteem.

"Indira! Mr. Fogerty called out again. Are you with us?"

I opened my mouth, prepared to make something up about molecular structures. But fortunately the bell rang, books were slammed shut, and bags swiped off tables.

Only two more periods to go.

There was a feature article I had once glanced at in a magazine, which was in the office of my father’s neurological practice, about what children dreamed of becoming when they grew up. According to the report, boys who once longed to be soldiers or astronauts or pilots would instead end up becoming insurance executives or chefs or investment bankers. Similarly, girls who saw themselves as movie stars and nurses and missionaries would end up raising children full-time or becoming management consultants or trial lawyers. The point of the feature was to highlight that what most children say they will do professionally as adults is almost always vastly different to the reality. As the article concluded, the practicalities of life often got in the way.

But despite what I had read, I knew in my heart of hearts that the career I had seen for myself would definitely, no matter what, happen for me. When I had decided, at age eleven, that I would one day become a fashion reporter, there had been no doubt in my mind that I would somehow get there. Even if nobody in my family could understand my fascination with clothes and shoes and supermodels, my commitment to the cause never wavered.

I can remember exactly when it happened. It was a sweltering hot summer, the first week of school vacation, and I was beyond bored. Some of my friends were in summer camp, while others had rented vacation houses in Mexico or Costa Rica or Santa Barbara. My parents had opted not to go that route, choosing instead to spend time with my baby brother, Dinesh, and myself, doing fun, family things in the comfort and convenience of our own home, with the exception of some day trips on the side.

But my father was suddenly asked to speak at an important conference in the fall, and needed to spend endless days during my vacation preparing for it. As if that wasn’t enough of a disappointment, my mother got immersed in some volunteer project that involved collecting clothes and toys to send to charities in India.

All of a sudden, those plans to visit Legoland, Disneyland, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium disappeared, leaving me with nothing but a basket of Barbie dolls and endless hours of Nickelodeon to keep me occupied.

After I had spent yet another afternoon complaining about having nothing to do, my mother took me to the local crafts store and asked me to take my pick: I could choose from scrapbooking, candle making, or quilting. There were balsa wood airplanes to be put together, stained-glass kits to fiddle with, glistening multicolored beads to string into necklaces.

But nothing captivated me.

On the way home, we stopped at the library so my mother could pick up a copy of the latest John Grisham. While we were waiting in line, me clutching Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, which I had really wanted to reread, something caught my eye on the top of a donated pile of books someone had left on the counter. I shoved the book I was holding under my arm, reached out for the one I had just seen, and held it firmly, transfixed by the image on the front. The black-and-white picture fascinated me; it was of a fashion model standing in a large plastic bubble that was floating down what looked like the Seine. She was gazing outward, looking prim and elegant in a checked suit. I turned the book around, and there she was again, in the same bubble, but this time on a dirt-strewn road. She was wearing gloves and a long dress, her dark hair swept off her face.

I want this, I said to my mother, who plucked it out of my hands to look at it.

Melvin Sokolsky: Seeing Fashion, she said, announcing the name of the book and its author. I’ve never heard of him.

Yes, but I want it, I said.

The book had yet to be cataloged and entered into the system, but the librarian told me that if I came back the next day, she would have it set aside for me.

That night, through dinner and even in my sleep, those pictures didn’t leave my head.

First thing the next morning, after my brother and I accompanied my mother on her clothes-collecting mission, I dragged her back to the library to pick up the book. I had my eyes glued to it all the way home and for the rest of the day. As I discovered, Sokolsky was a fashion photographer from the 1960s who took pictures for magazines like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. The photographs were a collection of his work over the years, each one more mesmerizing than the last; there were shots of girls in gowns dancing on giant chairs, and women in bright-colored suits suspended from strings, like marionettes. I studied all of them, memorizing not just the setting but the clothes, staring at the hair and makeup, taking note of the designers whose clothes the models were wearing. At dinner that night, I kept the book next to me, on the table.

"What is that you’ve been reading all day?" asked my father, who had been working on his speech in his office at home.

A book on fashion, I said. The first one I’ve ever seen. I love it.

Well, at least it’s something to keep you occupied, my mother announced wearily as she transported a tin of hot chapatis from the kitchen. Finally, one whole day in which you’ve not told me that you are bored.

That’s how it began. This was before I was really familiar with Google, so I had no choice but to actually leave my house to find out more. I went back to the library to see if there were any more fashion books, and checked out anything I could get my hands on. When I had exhausted all those possibilities, I asked my mother to take me to Borders and Barnes & Noble, where I sat in a chair leafing through encyclopedias on fashion and books on fashion history that I knew I could never afford to buy, my mother hovering nearby checking out the arrivals on the New Fiction table. I went all the way back to Egypt in 3000 BC, which, according to the weightier books on the subject said, was where fashion began. And I slowly charted its evolution through the ages, through ancient cultures, to arrive at where we were today.

All of a sudden, history was interesting to me; if I didn’t know the difference between Mayans and Etruscans before, I knew it now. As I left Borders one humid afternoon, I stopped by the magazine section, where I picked up a copy InStyle. I leafed through the pages, gazing at the silk bustiers and taffeta gowns, the hip-hugging denim capris and leather halterneck dresses worn by rich, famous, and beautiful people. I loved staring at the clothes in the pictures, wanting to soak in the details of each and every one.

It was that summer that I decided that fashion was going to be my life.

Now, at fifteen, my ambitions were utterly serious. Girls my age loved to troll through the mall, checking out the cool clothes in store windows. That was all fine and fun. But as far as I saw it, the study of fashion was a serious academic exercise. While the other girls in my class looked at The Red Carpet section of Us Magazine, I perused the contents of The St. James Fashion Encyclopedia: A Survey of Style from 1945 to the Present. When they were off listening to the new Gwen Stefani album, I would be examining every item of clothing she was wearing in her videos, guessing which designer she had chosen and why, writing lengthy dissertations for myself about how her fashion choices reflected her mind and music.

I put as much thought into fashion as my friends did when they were cramming for geometry or biology or English. That’s why I loved Celebrity Style so much. It took fashion as seriously as I did. It didn’t do what other magazines did—stalking famous people, writing about their drug addictions and alcoholic binges. It didn’t talk down to young readers, like so many of those teen magazines did. It was about fashion, yes. But as I told my mother countless times, it was frivolous in a good way. Few magazines could claim such a virtue. Yes, there were beautiful pictures and glamorous clothes, but I loved how it was put together. It was really about style. And because I was so in love with the subject, I could talk for an hour about Donna Karan’s signature look or the resurgence of Pucci or what defined London street style. I cared about it.

Fashion was my life. And today, after staving off sleep during algebra and being breathed on in class by Mrs. Mok, who had the worst case of halitosis ever, I was finally going to start living it.

two

I skipped the last five minutes of phys ed so I could hit the showers early, beating out the lines that would invariably start forming outside the curtained-off cubicles. It was my least favorite subject anyway: The problem with exercise, I had decided, was that it involved movement. Whenever my mother was in an especially generous mood, I would take advantage of it by asking her to write a note for Mrs. Mok, specifying that my allergies were acting up, that I was wheezing and puffing and couldn’t possibly jog around the campus again. My mother might have known that this wasn’t true, and that perhaps it didn’t reflect well on my doctor father, to have a daughter who always claimed some ailment or another. But my mother was a very practical sort: As long as I didn’t miss real classes as she called them, skipping phys ed on occasion was fine. After all, being able to sprint a couple of miles or score goals wasn’t going to help me get into an Ivy League college, was it? But today, I had decided to go for it, figuring that maybe a bout of exercise would lend a nice blush to my cheeks and a shine to my eyes before my life-changing moment with Aaralyn Taylor.

Still, my lack of interest in the exercise discipline, combined with the love of my mother’s homemade idli sambar, accounted for the roll of flab I had around my waist and that hovered on my upper thighs, parts of me that my irritating younger brother would describe as jiggly bits.

And I had to confess that there were