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The JNU art professor I met at the housewarming party offered to take me shopping today to help me find salwar kameez more easily. There is such a variety and I am obsessed with finding something cool—ie very lightweight cotton. Did I mention that it’s getting up to 95 here? Also, I am not much of a brocade, sequins and gold kind of person, and this is primarily what I was offered when I went on my own. She’d heard my troubles and offered to help. But a day of shopping needed some preliminary fortification.

We started off at the National Gallery seeing a very successful Indian photographer, Raghu Rai, who had an amazing knack for capturing life on the streets of India. If you really want to see India, ignore my lame pictures and get any of his many, many books!

After lunch we headed to Lajpat Nagar, a market that N and I visited a few weeks ago. But she knew the shops and we went straight in and got down to business looking at reams and reams of fabrics. It was quickly determined that I had been asking for the wrong thing—not light cotton, but muslin. And she recommended buying the fabric there and then getting it sewn at a tailors. Apparently the sewing will only cost about $4. So I got fabric for two “salwar” (the pants) and three “short kurtas” (the top).

I don't have any pictures of Lajpat Nagar yet. But here's a typical street scene in the Civil Lines area of Delhi. I took this in January when it was still cold here. Notice people are wearing sweaters. About a week ago many people were still wearing sweaters when it was 85 degrees. That's when we knew we were really in trouble.