A short history of nighties

Illustration/Uday Mohite

My friend S recently brought me a joke present from Kolkata: a maxi. Kindly dispel images of Lara Dutta in halter neck tangerine maxi and return to Andheri. Maxi, yaniki printed cotton nightie, worn by bustily bossy Bengali ladies. I was pleased.

We might think what you wear to bed would at least be spared judgement, but nighties are considered infra-dig, dowdy and "behenji types". (I've often wondered what word is the opposite of behenji. All I've come up with is snob). I find it funny that people find it funny that I love nighties, much as in my youth, people were surprised that I loved Hindi film songs, then considered maha uncool.

If one goes by Hindi film songs though, (and I always do), it wasn't always dial nyet for nightie. The nightie was a necessary accessory for the Modern Girl in movies from the 1960s-'70s - a sexy suggestion, the dress code for fantasy. Saira Bano was the ultimate nightie ambassador. Two of her more famous nightie songs (Bhai Battoor and Unse Mili Nazar) embody the "night-time routine" one read of in foreign magazines via a sort of reverse strip-tease. She begins in a bubble bath, rolls into a towel, gambols in a house coat, while brushing her hair in outward waves, until, wrapped in an extravagantly frilly nightie, she goes to her silken bed. A woman who has an abundance of privacy - her own bathroom, her own oval mirrored dressing table - and fantasies to spare, she discusses her nazuk nazuk jawani wondering "ab jayenge kitni door?" yaniki, shall we go all the way or what?

Other leading ladies of the time too feature in nightie songs. Nanda has a nightie in white satin on a moonlit terrace siging "yeh sama, sama hai yeh pyaar ka". Leena Chandaverker frolics in a form-fitting nightie as Sanjeev Kumar sings "yahan haath rakhna, yahaan dard hai' (his heart, what else you dutty people). There is a comment on the YouTube video of this song, which I think should apply to nightie-scoffers - "176 dislikes karne waalon, aao kabhi haveli PE."

Why are nighties scoffed at? Because at some point they were repurposed by middle and working-class women into home-wear and home-work wear. Because you can buy them in unfashionable (and glorious) markets like Lajpat Nagar or station bazaars for Rs 200. My childhood summer holidays in Bombay always involved an excursion to a particular shop on Hill Road, for batik kaftan-nighties, in high demand among the Delhi department of my family. The kaftan (Shabana Azmi wore several in Arth) is a way for middle class ladies to set themselves apart from the cheap floral nighties worn by lower middle class women. But they are identically used. Nighties don't need ironing, are easy for housework and allow you to slap on a dupatta if you need to "go for marketing" (yaniki to buy sabzi, not sell meetha jhoot about overpriced sack dresses pretending they are not nighties), as Bombay bhabis routinely do.

Recently, my friend M tweeted about the delight and discovery she and her teenaged daughter felt when wearing her mum's nighties when they stayed over. A nightie-maxi is the ultimate don't-care power wear. You can work in it, you can sleep in it and you can also spend Sunday in it, while watching nightie songs on YouTube. I've given you a playlist. Enjoy.

Paromita Vohra is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker, writer and curator working with fiction and non-fiction. Reach her at paromita.vohra@mid-day.com