Draping a Sari: Tales of Being and Becoming
Explore the intricate relationship between women and the sari, a six-yard garment that symbolizes tradition, identity, and resistance. Delve into personal anecdotes and historical insights to understand how this attire intertwines with feminism, freedom, and cultural evolution.
My mother tells us that she started wearing sari at the age of 9. We have learnt to discern her mood by the tone of her voice. It is the register in which she delivers this statement that determines her emotional state – a factual statement, incredulity, anger, a sense of accomplishment, superiority, fatigue, despondence, and many more. That a piece of cloth could invoke such a wide range of responses is beyond our understanding. We, who are blessed with the freedom of choice, do not share such a complex relationship with a piece of cloth. But for my mother, and maybe for many women of her generations, sari meant a whole set of discourses.
She being the eldest girl in the family, became grown up much before her biological age. Sari became synonymous with her growing up. She tells us with pride, how she used to play guli-danda (marble and stick) or bat and ball (local name for cricket), swam in the huge pond in her neighbourhood, and had even climbed trees wearing a sari. It spoke as much of her skill, as her spirit. She did all that the boys of her age were doing, by negotiating with the six yards (the standard size of a sari in Eastern India) at the same time. Was that her personal first wave of feminism? Her unrecorded efforts to try and achieve equality with the males of her own age was synchronous to the first generation feminists’ attempts to gain equality.
Life directs movements, they do not rise from vacuum. Repeated cycles of regulations, raised eyebrows, and unending sets of expectations bind life so tightly that often each step becomes a game of permissions. For most women, more for our parents’ generation, life was strictly governed by multiple sets of rules following a stern diktat of “women in our family do not do this”. This ‘do not do’ list, a DND of a different kind, could mean anything – talking or laughing loudly, running around, talking to males who were not kin, going to movies or theatre, singing aloud, sleeping in the afternoon, and the deadliest of all – falling in love. After marriage, this DND list expanded even more – not eating before one’s husband, eating whatever is left after feeding the entire family with the more nutritious and delicious portions of the meal, not wanting to visit her own parents frequently, and so on. Living life amid so many nays was no less than a hurdle race. Somehow, listening to my mother’s tale, and that of so many of her generations, sari became symbolic to me of all the proscriptive aspects of life. Tie down a girl in six yards and that’s equal to clipping her wings. She will be forced to slow down. The fact that she has grown up and is now up for the marriage market is put on display by this permanent change in attire.
I have had my own trysts with sari. Beginning my teaching career in a girls’ college, sari for me was an armour. Of a medium-built myself, I would often be elbowed and shoved, especially while climbing down the stairs, students often mistaking me as one of them. If a class ended in lunch break, reaching the teachers’ room was an arduous task. So I armoured myself in a sari and clutched the register as if an amulet, and marched along the corridor as confidently as I could. That was effective – it did reduce the jostles. So each morning, my day would begin with hunting for saris from my elder sisters-in-law’s wardrobes. Just back after my post graduation from Delhi, I did not possess a single one. The joint family structure of our Kolkata base helped. My sisters-in-law kept easy to handle saris for me and patiently bore with the torn pallu and scratched falls. But that was only the beginning. Gradually a love affair began. It was difficult at first, borne out of necessity but eventually the sari grew on me. I started my lessons in ethnicity, indigenous crafts, weaving industry and so on. It became a passion for me to collect indigenous saris from various parts of India, each showcasing a particular style in terms of weave or dye or patterns. With friends of similar feathers sari became a shared hobby. I started wearing sari more and more, and almost compulsorily for every formal occasion. Now I find my comfort in draping that long piece of cloth around myself.
But I have a choice. I have the freedom to give up that attire entirely or to embrace it. And that makes all the difference. Indian women have since long prided themselves in the collection of saris, often also as cherished heirlooms. But what they did not have, in many cases, was the choice. Now that my mother’s generation has reached an age where legs are slowly turning shaky as is confidence, saris with their pleats and layers pose a risk to their well being. Yet years of habit have led to iron cast inhibitions. Weaning them out of sari, even for their own good, is an uphill task. Each time I brace myself for this task of dissuading her from draping sari, I also think about the fairness of my actions. For the one who had been forced into a kind of attire early in life, one who has learnt to not only accept, but also to love the attire, how much justified am I to force her out of it? That my actions stem from a genuine concern about her well being while the previous proscriptions were based on certain prejudices provide little comfort. Doesn’t it ultimately amount to the same forced change of habits?
I wonder at the multiple areas of a woman’s life that have been governed by diktats or taboos. Attire, food, work, behaviour – all come under the rulebook. And who writes those rules? Whom do these rules benefit? I think these questions are self answered. Waves of feminist movements have helped us achieve certain choices, but how much does it take to subvert? Global history has taught us to be wary and to be on guard. Sari, as an attire, has also travelled a long way. From being just a thin, plain cloth to be wrapped around oneself, almost unfit to be worn outside, it has now become a fashion statement. But this path was not linear. Several steps back and forth mark the trajectory of the sari. A recently concluded exhibition on queering the sari takes the sari saga further. The six yards sweeps away the binary and enfolds several gender identities. The revolution that had begun with women like Jnanadanandini Tagore and others of her generation, in the nineteenth century, to find suitable attire for women to come out in the public view has now come a long way. Sari continues to evolve and take upon newer roles. May it and all other traditional wear be embellished with more choices and greater freedom to become a true reflection of one’s personality.
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