Becoming friends with my teenage enemy: Kurtas [Day 5/50]

The title might sound strange to you if you don’t belong to the North of India. A kurta is basically
a top worn by women and men in the southern asian countries.
It looks something like this:

Image from Author

I remember hating on kurtas for some reason. My family would encourage me to wear them but I would straight up deny.
Maybe it was the teenage rebellious phase or maybe it felt so ordinary to wear just a kurta. Wearing T-shirts and jeans felt more liberating. It was equivalent to freedom because so many girls and women in rural India are denied the basic right to wear clothes of their choice.

It was very common to hear bans on jeans by khap panchayats because they have "bad effects" on young girls.

Coming back to my story now, because of such a mindset teenage me found the freedom in denying to wear a salwar kurta. As I grew older, I occasionally started wearing it and the compliments increased the frequency of me wearing them.
Of course I loved getting compliments from people but then, gradually kurtas started to feel more comfortable. Way more comfortable than my staple jeans top. It was a hard pill to swallow because it was against the core beliefs of my teenage self.
Today, I have more kurtas in my wardrobe than any other clothing. I am best friends with my teenage…