So I decided to wear a sari to my uncle's engagement party. This wasn't as stupid a decision as it seems - in fact, it was probably stupid-er, or at least bad enough that I have to invent adjectives to describe it. My point is, I thought this would be a great idea. For those who are slow, here's a short list that will help explain exactly why I remain so attached to the vision of myself as one of those women who swans around effortlessly wearing a sari.
1. There is absolutely no fabric on earth that mimics a nice sari. Wearing a sari is really a way to display some of the most intricate, time-consuming and cosmically inexplicable labor ever undertaken by the human race. Imagine acres of golden net woven by hand and set with barely macroscopic gemstones, or embroidery in ten shades (including gold) that depicts the life cycle of a Kashmir butterfly in exquisite detail (are there butterflies in Kashmir? Who cares?) There's an old myth that Emperor Shah Jahan hired the most talented artisans in the world to carve the Taj Mahal, then blinded them when the work was over so they could never duplicate it. Well, I'm sure there's some corollary involving Mumtaz Mahal and the people who made her saris.
2. Nobody under the age of 35 really wears saris anymore, which is why it's even more impressive when someone bucks the trend and does it well. There are a million ways that this can go wrong - pick the wrong sari and children in the street will start calling you "Auntie" in no time. But I've been to a million work events at fancy venues like the Oberoi, full of women sporting striped pant suits and neatly ironed ponytails, when some girl streams by. She's slim, tall and statuesque, she looks feminine but powerful, the end of her pallu trails in the breeze of her wake. Suddenly, no one can look anywhere else. I want to be this woman.
3. Some of my fondest memories from childhood are of getting ready for parties with my mom. I will always associate saris with her (this kind of goes against #2 but stick with me). Mad Men has proven that Americans can fetishize fashion trends, but for me the sari is the equivalent of "Old Hollywood." Certain things, while timeless, can still make us nostalgic. The sari has that kind of power.
But it's not as simple as it seems. Wikipedia says that a sari is a length of fabric between 6 and 9 metres in length, and that is exactly what it feels like when you put one on for the first time. A cousin of mine, after being weighted down in a massively embroidered and bejewelled sari for her own wedding, turned to me with mournful eyes and asked, "Am I a woman or a donkey?"
I don't really know how to "drape" a sari. When I was in seventh grade my school did a unit on 'India,' and we had to perform skits. As the only Indian-American, I got to drape everyone's saris for the skit. Since we didn't have any saris, we used bedsheets. Halfway through a skit about Gandhi, Mr. M, the media teacher, walked in. He glanced at Gandhi, caught in the revolutionary act of spinning, and at Gandhi's wife and sister standing behind him. "Are they supposed to be ghosts? Or Roman senators?" he stage-whispered to the history teacher. She shrugged; as if to say it didn't matter which.
Another cousin offered to drape my sari for the engagement party. This probably wasn't a great idea (see the first part of #2, above) but the hotel room we rented had an electrical problem and I couldn't really see the end result. I felt like I was wearing a cosy tablecloth; it reminded me of snuggling up in a blanket as a kid. An expensive, embroidered blanket, with sequins on it. The pleats in the middle - which are easily an early sari-wearer's Achilles heel - seemed fine, and not in danger of unraveling.
Things went all right for the first few hours of the party. Everyone complimented me. "I don't even recognize her," my grand-father kept saying, which is an impressive statement from someone who shares an eighth of your genetic material. "You look like one of the women," my 11-year-old cousin said. (A statement that, in hindsight, might not have been a compliment)
"You carry it off well," my uncle said. "What, this thing?" I shrugged, trying on my swan persona. Unfortunately, shrugging unsettled the delicate gravity of the sari, so I decided not to move my arms very much for the rest of the evening. Still, I felt like the belle of the ball.
After a few hours, though, things started to go wrong. I strolled out to the cars that were going to take us to the dinner. I looked down and noticed that my bundle of pleats had migrated down a few inches. I hitched them up and kept going.
At the bar, I asked for a gin and tonic. By then I'd been wearing my heavy sari for about eight hours. "Here you go," the bartender said, handing me a rum and 7UP. I was about to correct him when I noticed that the pleats of my sari had again shifted and were now starting to puddle on the floor between my shoes, looking obscenely orange against the white marble. I tried to gather some of the fabric surreptitiously in my hand, but it felt like the material had thickened and lengthened. It fought me. Drink in one hand, sari in the other, I beat a retreat to the bathroom. By then I'd been wearing the sari for ten hours. I was already counting down the minutes until I could get home.
In the bathroom (it was a nice hotel, but the bathrooms still had that ineffable - and I use the word 'ineffable' in the same way as Urban Dictionary, not Merriam-Webster - funk that so many Indian bathrooms have), I tucked in the pleats again. My blouse had also started to pinch. One of the most attractive points in a well-worn sari (like in any female garment, really) is the waist. The material accentuates the waist without necessarily baring it. I felt like I'd done ok on this front, but now the bit around my waist had started to puff alarmingly. I jammed it back under the petticoat (let this never be considered uncomplicated!) and figured if I held onto the pleats with one hand I'd be ok.
With my left hand out of commission, I decided the best plan was to get another drink and try to forget about the situation. This actually worked. After my second rum and 7UP, I managed to forget about the annoying sari and about how incredibly awful rum and 7UP taste together. I worked the room, talking to my uncle's fiancee's relatives. As far as I could tell I was a total hit.
Meanwhile, the sari situation was going steadily south. I felt like the fabric had developed its own mind. It was tired, and it wanted a rest. The safety pin that had been holding my pleats together had completely disappeared - leaving not even a pinhole where it had been. The pallu - the part that comes over the shoulder - was also slipping steadily off my arm, in danger of taking my entire sari blouse with it. I had a flash of terrified inspiration - so this is how Janet Jackson felt - and then realized I was holding five yards of fabric together in my left hand and really hoping everyone else had been drinking more heavily than me. Dinner, of course, was buffet-style. Unfortunate, but somehow I managed, only relaxing once I was at the table and my lower half was hidden.
After a record 12 hours in the sari, I staggered gratefully into a waiting car. At this point it was probably clear to everyone that the great sari experiment had gone on a bit too long (So had the entire evening - when we arrived at the restaurant nearly two hours late, the maitre'd smiled and said, "So you are a bit late?" while pinching his thumb and forefinger together as if to show just how much we were late by. The waiters, already tipsy, refused to circulate the appetizers)
I arrived home and bolted for a bedroom, where I opened my hand. The sari slipped, slithered and eventually pooled around me, a glittering chiffon ocean with little gold sequins squinting up out of it. This is a sari's natural state, and probably how it looks best. Folding the suddenly quiescent material, I had the impression of a force of nature that I'd tried unsuccessfully to harness.
Interestingly, Wikipedia also has this to say about the sari: "In ancient Indian tradition and the Natya Shastra (an ancient Indian treatise describing ancient dance and costumes), the navel of the Supreme Being is considered to be the source of life and creativity, hence the midriff is to be left bare by the sari." Which brings me to the final reason.
4. The sari, because of its origins, its shape and its history, isn't just a piece of fashion, like a skirt or even a bikini. The purpose of the iconic bikini is to show the female body, but the sari becomes that body. The sari's beauty, its surprising strength, its will, and ultimately its profound but necessary purpose - well, it's one of the best metaphors we have.
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