if you’re in a sari, you’re safe?

At an Indian wedding: silk sari and high heels, gold and discrete perfume at ears, wrists and throat, skin-tight plunging blouse under the sari’s drape, the requisite four inches of curved waist and vertebrae on view, fragrant white flowers in my open hair. General verdict: respectable young woman.

Three days later, at a bookshop in New Delhi: loose dark trousers, flat sandals, dull red handloom cotton top, showing collarbones but not much else, no jewellery, hair tied back in a casual knot. I reach up to get a book and my shirt rises, showing about half an inch of skin. General verdict: shameless hussy.