o have been born to such a culture, but I am quite sure that I would never be able to regress to the state that Sumita is in at the beginning of the story. I believe that the author's point is that neither will Sumita. She has tasted freedom and self determination, and she will never want to go back to giving up her power to other people again.
The story's title, "Clothes," is an especially interesting one, given what it is about. Sumita defines her progress through her clothes, gradually working her way up to starting to feel confident about wearing "a blouse and skirt the color of almonds," a radical departure from the various saris which help define her to herself and her family. When I first arrive dhere, I was as shocked by how American women sometimes dressed as I was by how they behaved, but I very quickly became accustomed to Western dress. For the most part, it is not so different from women at home, and it was only the most extreme examples that used to stand out for me. I can look at a woman now who is wearing fishnet stockings and a very small leather skirt and has dyed her hair bright pink, and I am more entertained than horrified. At the end of the story, Sumita still has not revealed to anyone but her dead husband that she even owns anything other than saris.
Here in America, clothing choices sometimes proclaim religious affiliation, sometimes suggest cultural background, and most often just say something very specific about the individual's current frame of mind or reaction to the weather. I have come to realize the truth of that American expression, "You can't judge a book by its cover." I am not always happy to be living in a culture where what I see tells me so little about the people around me, but I would not want to be in Sumita's position, either, "caught in a world where everything is frozen in place, like a scene inside a glass paperweight."
When I came to America, I was planning to take ful...