I was shopping with my sister-in-law in an alley in Delhi. I found a calf-length tight skirt that I liked but wasn't sure whether it’d fit right. There was just one makeshift trial room in the shop – basically, three long pieces of cardboard held together with tape and a raggedy curtain on one side – which was occupied. I was impatient to try it on.
“Why not just slip it on over what you’re wearing now and see?” my sister-in-law suggested. I figured there was no harm in that and proceeded to slip the skirt over my head, intending to wiggle it down over my shoulders and hips. To my horror, the skirt got stuck just as it went down over my shoulders, leaving me gasping for breath inside of it with my arms pinned straight up, flailing helplessly. I was effectively in a strait jacket that masked my head.
No matter what I did, it would not budge. It took both my sister-in-law and a shop assistant to extricate me from the skirt by vigorously yanking it back over my head. I emerged all disheveled, like a butterfly from its cocoon, and figured that the skirt probably wasn't right for me.
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