कुर्ता is not a women’s garment. Men wear kurta with pyjama or jeans, women wear it with salwaar or leggings. It is genuinely unisex, and this surprises visitors who have only seen it marketed abroad as women’s fashion.

चप्पल deserves attention because it governs a real social rule: shoes come off before entering a home, and always before entering a temple, mosque or gurudwara. There will be a pile of footwear at the door. Slip-on chappals exist partly because of how often Indians take shoes off in a day.

A word on fabric, because it drives what people actually buy. सूती (sooti) means cotton and is what most people wear through the brutal summer months. रेशमी (reshmi) is silk, reserved for weddings and festivals. ऊनी (ooni) is woollen, and North Indian winters are genuinely cold enough to need it — visitors who assume India is uniformly hot arrive in Delhi in January badly underdressed.

Notice how much English is embedded: size, try, tight, colour names. This is normal urban Hindi, not broken Hindi. In a Delhi or Lucknow shop, using pure Sanskritised Hindi for these words would sound stranger than code-mixing.

What you wear signals a great deal in India, and the rules shift sharply between contexts. In metros, women in jeans are unremarkable. In small towns and villages, modest dress — covered shoulders and knees — attracts far less attention and simply makes the day easier.

Religious sites have firm requirements: heads covered in gurudwaras and many mosques, shoes off everywhere, and shoulders covered in most temples. The दुपट्टा is genuinely useful here — it doubles as a head covering, a sun shield and a modesty layer, which is exactly why it is worn.

White has a specific meaning too. It is the colour of mourning in Hindu tradition, so a bride will never wear white, and turning up to a celebration in all white can read oddly. Red, gold and bright colours are auspicious.

Tailoring is also worth understanding. Ready-made clothing is everywhere now, but buying loose cloth and having a दर्जी (darzi, tailor) stitch it remains completely normal and often cheaper. You buy the fabric by the metre, take it to the tailor, get measured, and collect the finished garment in a week. For a kurta or a blouse this is still the default in most of the country.

कपड़े contains ड़, the flapped retroflex — ‘kap-ṛe’, not ‘kapde’. साड़ी has the same sound: ‘saa-ṛee’. कमीज़ ends in z because of the nukta. चप्पल doubles the p, so hold it slightly. And कुर्ता has a half-r before the t — the r is pronounced but not given its own vowel, giving ‘kur-ta’ in one smooth motion.

• Assuming kurta is womenswear. Men wear it constantly.
• Wearing shoes into a home or temple. Always check for a shoe pile at the door.
• Pronouncing कपड़े with a hard d instead of the flapped ड़.
• Calling a dupatta a scarf and treating it as optional decoration. With a salwaar-kameez it is part of the outfit.
• Wearing white to a wedding or festive occasion, which carries mourning associations.

1. Name everything you are wearing right now in Hindi.
2. Role-play buying a kurta: ask to see it, ask the price, ask for another colour.
3. Practise कपड़े and साड़ी focusing only on the ड़ sound.
4. List three places where you must remove your shoes.
5. Describe what a person in a photograph is wearing, in Hindi.