on a slow, blurry morning.

 

 

peculiarly light and airy feeling as i throw the chanderi on the bed and place a black silk blouse on it. black and white, no… black and off white. creases and crush as nothing is ironed. so what though, still looks rather wonderful.

it’s been a fuzzy headed morning. not enough sleep, and now two consecutive days of dressing up. i know since i started a whole blog on sarees and plaster it with my shots in sarees, one might be forgiven for thinking i love decking up.

i do. but only once in a while. say once a month. two days in a row, my brain is longing for grunge.

but the off white chanderi calls. it seems to know my state of mind. “what blouse?” i mutter to myself. “why not black,” says the chanderi. “no, not the one with zardosi neckline. just plain black.”

 

i’d worn my mother’s pearl necklace last night. that and its matching earrings were the only jewellery my mother kept with herself. she’d wear them once in a way if there was a dinner party or even a wedding in assam, where we lived in a tiny oil township called duliajan when i was growing up. the rest of her jewellery remained in a locker in calcutta, for family weddings she’d take out a couple of things at times. otherwise, the bank of india vault by deshapriya park kept all the glitter embraced in its cold steel heart. 

 

the pearls with their kundan ornaments, the brightness of my mother touches me when i slip the necklace on. maybe i’ll wear it again today. and just plain pearl bangles, made when i got married nearly forty years ago, with pearls my grandmother had kept for many years.

“what say?” i ask the gauzy one.

“not bad,” comes the nod from the chanderi, along with a golden wink. is it acquiring a singaporean tone? how wannabe, it’s just arrived here.

“what earrings?” i mutter.

my mind goes blank again.

 

 

 

 

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sarees tell stories | off white chanderi saree from handlooms karigar based in the town of chanderi, madhya pradesh. bought in 2022.

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i see i started with "peculiarly". my mother used to say "peculiar" often... i can almost see her looking at me writing this and murmuring it with that glint in her eyes. 

 

 

 

 

 

pleats held aloft

 

i’d woken up crying that morning. i must have been fourteen at the time. those days, i was staying with my grandparents in delhi, while my parents were in england for a couple of years. 

the cause of the barrage of tears was a dream, if one can call it that. in it my mother was there, but she was slim and wearing a skirt.

i can never quite adequately explain how scary that was, how alien, how… could such a thing happen. even if it hadn’t occurred in reality.

i wept so much, my grandmother had to make a fairly expensive trunk call to my mother, and i think it was only after i spoke to her that i calmed down. somewhat. 

why was i in such a state? well, to me, mother meant large, and saree. i’d never seen her in anything else ever. and i couldn’t even conceive of her as shapely or svelte. she was voluminous contours, generous girth, all botero, absolute comfort and security. when i buried my face against her my skin touched her saree, a thousand storms couldn’t knock her down, she was safety. and she was far away. imagine my plight at being struck by that vision as i slept, defences down. 

a skirt? she wore a parrot green and orange kanjeevaram to the jung frau in the alps. there’s a shot of her at the ice museum, in fact, if any proof is needed. frilly large cotton nighties that many mothers had started wearing as we grew up, or salwars, churidars, lehengas… my mother wore none of them. she was always in a saree, casually thrown on, with a blouse of another colour because she couldn’t be bothered getting matching ones, no attempt to be fashionable whatsoever, graceful without trying to be so.  

her two years in the uk had her taking buses and tubes, the last time she’d tackled public transport was in college, she managed with aplomb in her saree. only compromise, instead of handloom or printed cottons and kotas or silks that she usually liked to wear, she switched to mostly printed synthetics. can’t say they were good to look at, but they were convenient. actually, back in college too it was sarees. she told me she started wearing them when she was thirteen, a year younger than i was on the night of the bawling dream.  

of late, i find myself wondering whether i should start wearing a saree every day. maybe all the time. like ma used to. the thought does drift by every now and then and sets me mulling. 

my lovely grandmother, who called ma that day and made sure i was ok even as my “nightmare” brought on much mirth in the family, also wore a saree all the time. as did my other grandmother.  

images of crisp taañt or handloom cottons, usually white, worn the bengali “shadha sheedhe” / plain and simple way, float by. my mother’s mother wore silks or nylons (very in back in the sixties and seventies) when she stepped out. then she preferred the pleats-in-front, pallu-over-left-shoulder way of wearing the saree. my father’s mother stuck to the shadha sheedhe style everywhere. i remember how deftly both grandmothers tucked their sarees. a couple of swishes and voila. 

though my mother wore sarees from the time she was considered grown up – tradionally, you ceased to be a child at thirteen i guess in many cultures (okay, i’m rolling my eyes, this whole thing needs much discussion) – she didn’t ever insist that i do the same.  

as a child, for some festivals i wore sarees, but really hardly ever. somewhere along the way, when i was around twenty, i started wearing them more often. over the years, i’ve been through a bit of a love-hate relationship with this taken for granted garment. currently, it’s love. but things might change any time. 

so, why do i ponder whether i should wear a saree every day? perhaps i want to step into that circle where my mother sits with her arch smile. where my grandmother’s eyes are gentle as they spot me, and my other grandmother reads her mahabharata quietly. their sarees wrap around them snug and comforting. soft and lucid. 

should i just go ahead and do it?  

well, maybe not. at least, not right now. my pants and loose shirts are still me. so are the long skirts, the block printed tops, the occasional gharara or mekhela or  something else, and of course the fading cotton nighties (nightmare inducing for some). 

for now, let’s just wear a saree when i feel like it. as i did this passover. the first night was on a shabbat. we were in london. it was cold. we had to walk back home late at night after the seder. i wear slight heels with my sarees, but walking on them is tough on my knees, and this would be a forty-five minute trudge. i wore a saree anyway, and ditched the heels too. at five foot nothing that is an act of sheer courage. 

my daughter donned a cool black dress and didn’t have to hold her pleats aloft in a tight grip as we plodded home at 3am, wrapped in sweaters and coats. who knows, maybe some day she’d want to…  

there i go dreaming again.

 

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sarees tell stories | maroon fine tangail saree with peach motifs, unusual four leaf clover motif, from meera basu, kolkata, bought around 2008.

 

 

 

first night of passover was on a shabbat, a friday.

 

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in a pink nylon saree

it was my maternal uncle’s wedding. may 1966. i was six, my cousins between four and ten. we were five of us girls i think. we were all going to attend the wedding in calcutta and then go to delhi for the reception. my grandmother, always generous, fun, a bit over the top as grandmothers really ought to be, decided to get nearly identical lehengas and sarees made for us.

the lehengas were in red silk with green cholis and red floaty odhnis, lots of shimmery gold zari all over.

the sarees were in various shades of pink. pink nylon… from a calm poised rose to a bright unstinting gulabi. and they had shiny gota work all over. ribbons of silver zari had been cut and trimmed and appliquéd in a pretty pattern on the slippery material; the silver with its cool tinsel sheen and the pink so smooth and ice cream like. they were little girls’ sarees, much shorter in both length and width than regular ones.

rajasthan is well known for gota work, my grandmother had had the sarees made in jaipur, where my grandfather’s younger brother and his wife lived. i will never forget that gaudy happy saree of mine. to me it was beautiful, absolutely perfect; in fact, now that i think of it, i wish i still had it. stays in my mind, its touch, its colour, its pattern, its gota dazzle, the springy feel of nylon.

it was my first “good saree”. not that i had a serious collection of sarees by the age of six, i did have one other saree though. a yellow cotton, which i’d worn for saraswati puja that year. children would often wear sarees for the puja dedicated to the goddess of learning. yellow being the preferred colour, though exactly why i have no idea.

but the pink and silver saree was my hot favourite. i wore it many times after my uncle’s wedding, finding all sorts of excuses to throw it on. i was also convinced i looked impossibly beautiful in it. to the credit of all those who suffered my self obsession, no one damaged my fantasy, quite happily letting me believe, yes, indeed i was gorgeous in pink sparkly nylon.

nylon. slippery and synthetic. can’t say i like the fabric at all. in the sixties though, this human made material was not only in, it may have even been a sign of a contemporary woman, one with a mind of her own even, daring to try new ideas, not just traditional silks and cottons. i don’t know if i read that right, but my mother, maternal aunts, and grandmother often wore nylon sarees; and they were all women with a modern bent of mind, tough, hard to rein in… ha. maybe that’s why i feel nylon sarees said something about the wearer’s personality. there was a very pretty one of my grandmother’s, base off white, tiny rose buds printed all across.

as i write, a thought comes along. was it my my pink nylon gota saree that was responsible for two things in more recent years?

first, when my mother turned seventy, we had a party for her and i was keen to pick up a dhakai for both of us. so i went to this lady from whom i’ve been buying dhakais for years, i chose a lovely black and white one for my mother and then my eyes fell on a pink and silver saree. i couldn’t look away.

this strawberry ice cream hued fine cotton with silver zari glittering on it… i just could not look away. i forgot my age, i forgot my million inhibitions, i had to buy it.

wore it the very next day with a blouse that didn’t match… ten years on, when the saree frayed, i sent desperate whatsapp messages to the lady, with pictures; and very kindly, she had one more made for me. almost the exact same shade.

of course, in the meantime i’d bought another one in pink, just in case this couldn’t be replicated. and i notice, i find it very hard, extremely so in fact, to stay sane when i see a pink saree. plenty of new gulabis suddenly in my cupboard. maybe as i age, a part of me is suddenly racing back, trying to pick up something from back then. catching a gota shine and dragging it here.

second, when my daughter was about six years old, i asked a dear aunt of mine, who has her own boutique, to make a saree for my daughter. there was a wedding in the family. my aunt made a wonderful saree. no, not in nylon. it was a rich blue tussar, embroidered all over, with border and pallu in… pink.

 

would like to thank a friend of mine, for reminding me of our first sarees and how a girl looks all grown up when she gets into a saree.

 

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sarees tell stories | pink dhakai from sumitra sengupta, calcutta, 2017; pink printed tussar from toontooni, calcutta, 2017; pink rajkot patola from design & drama, calcutta 2016; blue and pink tussar from raya’s boutique, calcutta, 2007.

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of real and fake and chanderi sarees

 

he loved vintage cars. every morning, practically, he'd come to look at his collection, which used to be kept in a garage built on land rented from my family. he always wore pristine, brilliant white pajamas and a flowing crisp kurta, his hair would be neatly brushed and the most pleasant smile would appear on his face if he happened to spot you or any of your elders.

"namashkar!" he'd greet in a low amicable tone, as he raised his hands high before him, palms joined. he'd let you go up close to his cars, even touch a shiny collectible surface if you wished to. he let some of us sit in one of his priceless automobiles once. he was the best tenant one could have and the most polite and decent man.

given the ironies of life, it really shouldn't have surprised anyone when he turned out to be not quite the man you thought he was. but all that came later.

much after his wife and he had gifted me my first chanderi saree. it was for my wedding and they'd chosen well. on a base of deep purple – it had a tinge of mocha brown in it – sat delicately woven dull gold motifs and an elegant restrained border in the same matte gold zari. the fabric was of the finest quality.

that perfect gossamer of chanderi, the wafting gauziness of it all... almost like a dream the fall. like a veil through which you look at memory.

i fussed endlessly about wearing the saree, even though i loved it. but when would i ever be thin enough to feel confident in a material so sheer? the struggle went on, the weight stayed put. i think i finally surrendered to temptation and wore the saree once, maybe twice. in time, it frayed and i had to let it go.

but a chanderi that belonged to my grandmother i couldn't throw away, even when it was in shreds. its pink is bright and playful, the contrasting blue border highlights the character of the main colour. intricate motifs in zari and a darker shade of pink traipse across the saree, its solid gold border shimmers.

as it tore in my hands, a world seemed to shift out of focus. i kept the borders, bits of the pink at the edges. some day, i think, some day, i'll go to chanderi and get someone to make a saree like that for me.

for centuries, possibly beginning in the eleventh – or who knows, maybe even earlier... or later – this delightful fabric of cotton and zari, and later silk, has been woven in the town of chanderi. 

picture courtesy uploader

situated between malwa and bundelkhand in central india, chanderi was part of the trade routes and became an important military outpost. it was fought over and ruled by many kings and conquerors. babur, allaudin khilji, and the rajputs, among them. 

it's mentioned in ibn batuta's travelogues, he went there in 1342, apparently. wonder if he wrote about the weavers and their fine product?

the lightweight cotton with its sheer transparency always startles me. 

something about its texture. 

hold it up and look through, a maze of patterns form on the threads, an optical illusion created by weave and play of light on it perhaps. and though chanderi was traditionally made with cotton only, it's never bothered to look anything but luxurious.

am talking of the real ones, not the fakes that have overtaken the market. there are a few designers and also shops like fabindia, that are getting quite serious about reviving and keeping alive the looms of chanderi. maybe fakes have their uses...

and now that i think, had the man in white been a good guy all the way, something would have certainly gone missing from my recollections of chanderi. when the twist in that tale came and he behaved in a way no one could have imagined, i raved and ranted, but i kept the saree.

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sarees tell stories | yellow chanderi from touch of class paithani, grey and silver chanderi from an exhibition in singapore, both bought in 2014.

 

posted this on writersbrew.com on august 5, 2016

 

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