News reports say that Yamini Roy, the Bengali bride of Varun Gandhi will get married in a pink and gold brocade Banarasi saree which once belonged to her late grand mother-in-law Indira Gandhi. It was Indiraji’s gift to her younger daughter-in-law Maneka when the latter married the original Mrs. Gandhi’s second son Sanjay, who was groomed to be the Prime Minister after Indiraji, but which dream was snatched away by his untimely death in an aircraft crash.
The report adds that in the reception, Yamini will be clad in a 100-year-old orange and gold Banarasi saree which originally belonged to the late Kamala Nehru, wife of Jawaharlal Nehru. Kamala Nehru had died at a young age in 1936 and Indiraji inherited this saree. Apparently, she passed it on to Manekaji as a heirloom. Now the latest Mrs. Gandhi is going to be the proud owner of this invaluable treasure!
By the way, Indiraji and Maneka had fallen out with each other soon after Sanjay’s death; one of the reasons for this was that after Sanjay, Indiraji wanted her elder son Rajiv, then a serving pilot in Indian Airlines, to succeed her, whereas Maneka perhaps had nursed an ambition of inheriting the political legacy. As a result, Maneka had to leave the house. It is one of the unsolved ‘What ifs’ of history as to what would have been the political scenario in India now, had Sanjay Gandhi or Maneka, instead of Rajiv Gandhi, succeeded Indiraji. As fate would have it, Rajiv’s son Rahul and Sanjay’s son Varun find themselves in opposite camps of the political divide in India now, one being the heir apparent in the Congress Party and the other, out in the cold, in the Opposition BJP. The two branches of the Gandhi Clan, although occupying opposing ends of the political spectrum, are reportedly thawing in the social sphere.
Coming back to our six-yard wonder, the saree has been the traditional symbol of Indian womanhood. It adds to the grace and mystery of the Indian woman. From Sita to Draupadi in the epics to Aishwarya Rai Bachchan of today’s glamour world, the saree has been the beautifying wear favoured by Indian women through the ages. The ending scene of the film ‘Devdas’, with the long pallu of the bewitching saree trailing behind her, when Aishwarya rushes out hearing that Devdas was lying, worn, exhausted and sick, at her door, is a really memorable one. Decades ago, I had come across an advertisement saying, “A woman expresses herself in many ways; Vimal (a brand of sarees) is one of them.” Indeed when a lady chooses a particular saree to wear, she does it to express herself, to make a statement. It is said that a beautiful saree adds to the charm of a beautiful woman and and a beautiful woman adds to the attractiveness of the saree she drapes around herself. A pretty woman and an elegant saree complement each other. Sometimes it becomes difficult to say who/which of them enhances whose beauty!
A saree is a six-yard long dream, colourful, soft, delicate and radiant. It is an all-purpose versatile wear, home-wear, festival-wear, suitable for cycling, driving, diving, swimming and running- many times to catch a bus. Ladies’ bicycles are specially designed to suit them to ride it wearing a saree. It is a comfortable wear for walking dreamily on the sea-shore. Its uses are myriad – affectionately wiping off sweat from her child’s face, wiping a tear, a wet face, hands or a running nose, either her own or that of her child, picking up a hot utensil from the stove. It can be used as a protective umbrella, sun-shade, a full veil for the shy bride, a half-veil to enhance the charm of the face and as a substitute for a bag to put vegetables bought from a wandering vendor. In an old film, there is a memorable scene in which the bashful heroine alternately ties and unties a knot on her pallu, hiding herself behind the door and listening to what the elders were talking in the outer room deciding her marriage with her lover. When she senses that someone is coming, she flees inside like a doe. In the days of joint families, a bunch of keys firmly tied to the end of the pallu and dangling on the back, was the symbol of authority of the senior-most lady of the house (LOH). This matron used to hand over the keys to the eldest daughter-in-law when the former no longer felt herself to be physically fit. You think of a need, and the saree can be used to meet that need. It is the dress of the labourer as well as the ruler. Jhansi ki Rani Laxmibai fought the British, clad in a saree. It is the ultimate symbol of feminine grace, elegance and power.(Tragically, sometimes a woman uses her saree to hang herself.)
It can be woven in thousands of designs and colours, giving the weaver and the wearer alike, room for self-expression. For choosing a stitched garment, a lady has to look at the size but in case of sarees, she need not bother. One size fits all. Not only that. Of course on certain very special occasions, a nine-yard saree is required. If the wearer is thin, the saree can be worn to hide her thinness; if she is, to use the politically correct term, a little healthy, she can trust the saree to make her look relatively thin. And trust me, a saree makes a woman look taller than she would look in a stitched dress.The pretty Hindi film actor Vidya Balan always wears a saree. "It defines my womanhood.", she says.
Legend has it that in the Mahabharata, when Krishna sustained a minor injury in which his finger started bleeding, Draupadi lost no time in tearing off a strip from her elegant saree and tied it around his injured finger to stop the bleeding. This spontaneous act later paid her rich dividends. Duryodhan ordered Dushashan to disrobe Draupadi in the open court and she besought her five husbands and all the elders present there, to save her honour. None of them raised his head as they were duty-bound and helpless. In desperation, she appealed to Krishna. And lo and behold! A never-ending stream of a saree got wrapped around her and Dushashan had to give up exhausted, going on and on, trying to pull her saree off.
Coming down to earth, Rupa Ganguly played the role of Draupadi in B. R. Chopra’s TV serial Mahabharata. A very special, long, long saree was woven for her to wear in that scene and after the scene was shot, it took some time to decide what to do with the long, long saree!
In my school days, I had read a story about four friends, a carpenter, a Brahmin, a goldsmith and a weaver. They had to make a long and arduous journey, which involved passing through a jungle at night. At nightfall, they halted. It was agreed that during the night, three of them would sleep and the fourth would be on guard, by rotation. At first, the carpenter was on guard. To kill his boredom, he carved the figure of a young lady out of a piece of wood. When his turn ended, he woke up the goldsmith to be on guard. The goldsmith made some ornaments and put them on the figure. It was now the turn of the Brahmin to be on guard. Seeing the beautiful figure, he chanted some mantras and turned it into a human being. In the last part of the night, the weaver was on guard. Seeing the young girl, he wove a beautiful saree and draped it around her.
Now it was morning. Seeing the beautiful girl, each one wanted to marry her. They could not decide who should marry her and went to the King for a decision. After listening to each of them and after consulting his court, the wise King delivered his judgment. Since the carpenter and the Brahmin had respectively created and given life to her, they were like her father; since the goldsmith had given her ornaments, he had performed the duty of a brother; since the weaver had protected her modesty, he was entitled to be her husband. So we have seen what a saree can do!
Foreigners who chose India as their karmabhumi have chosen saree as their preferred wear. Mother Teresa gave the white saree with blue border its brand-value. While painting an image of hers, M F Hussain did not feel the need to include a face in it. The blue-bordered white saree in the draped form says everything. Sonia Gandhi’s public wear is saree, although her sarees are not as elegant as were those of her mother-in-law Indira Gandhi. She gave up her Italian dressing and chose the saree, to make a political statement.
Now-a-days, college- and office-going girls prefer stitched garments over sarees for convenience and fashion. However, come festivals, marriages and other special occasions, and all of them go back to their roots and don sarees. In puja pandals, you will hardly find a girl in a stitched dress. Even girls who do not know how to drape a saree (It is really a skilled art!) go for it during pujas and marriages (their own and those of others). In many parts of India, a bride without a glittering saree is unimaginable! Many arranged marriages, and even some love-marriages, originate in chance meetings at puja pandals and at marriage-functions of common friends and relatives. When a marriage-proposal is finalized, it is often rounded off with a gift of shankhaa (red-colored lac bangles), sindoor (vermilion), and saree for the girl.
Over the years, women's workplace attire has evolved from salwar-kameez to ready-to-wear dress-suits, so much so that there is the risk of losing both the saree as well as salwar-kameez. Dupatta (or the lajja-vastra as it was originally conceived) is no longer used. However, to some, the saree contunues to be the ultimate power-dress for working women. Often, there is an unmistakable respect shown by the office-staff to a saree-clad woman.
The beauty of the saree goes beyond the fabric or print; it is in the various ways in which it can draped. It can be worn to provide a 'sati-savitri' look, a 'masterani' look or if she likes to get some 'oomph', she has only to carelessly throw the pallu over the shoulder . There are occasions when a lady would often let her pallu gently slide, to provide a subtle glimpse of her cleavage delicately and 'naturally' to make hearts throb - all of course, to in the best interests of winning more business for her firm.
One reason why a lady takes a lot of time to dress up, is that she loves to stand in front of her wardrobe and admire her collection of sarees before deciding which one to wear. She tries to remember when, on what occasion and from where she had purchased each saree. She tries to remember which saree she had worn the last time while visiting the person/s she was going to meet so that there should not be any repetition. One wise technology-savvy lady had even fed to her computer the names of all her friends and acquaintances and the saree she had worn while meeting them on each date! She used to keep this information always updated and consult the data while deciding on which saree to wear when visiting a particular person.
Women love sarees. They love to buy sarees. And they also love the process of buying sarees. So while men do not take much time to decide which shirt or dress to buy, women take ages to select a saree. They will see hundreds of sarees at tens of shops to decide. Always stretched for time, i am a victim of this. To purchase one saree, the wife examines over a hundred pieces at 5 or 10 shops before deciding to buy the first saree which she saw at the first shop!!! And sometimes, by the time we go back to the first shop, we find that the particular saree has already been sold off!
To assist women to see a large number of sarees before zeroing on their selected one, the shops employ a large number of salespersons. And just think of it! Shop-owners have opened their establishments with good business-calculations and not for charity; they take into account the expenses on the extra sales force while deciding the price-tags!
When i was at Hyderabad, we used to visit one particular area to buy sarees. That particular locality had several large saree-stores. To maintain peace at home, i used to reluctantly take her there whenever she had the fancy to buy a saree. To save myself from boredom and to utilize the precious time which otherwise would have been wasted, i used to carry a book or a few magazines to read when she would be indulging in her favourite pastime. I used to occupy a comfortable seat in the waiting area for customers and be engrossed in reading. Called when the payment–time would come, i would meekly perform the duty and return to my reading while she would stride away to the same shop or the nearby shop/s to purchase another one. While leaving the house, she would say that she would buy just one saree which she would say she badly needed, but would go on buying several ones for herself and for others, stretching to the limit, my patience and the capacity of my purse/credit card! :((((((((((( I am continuing the practice of carrying a book/magazine while escorting her to the saree mart.
In the West, it is believed that there is a correlation between fashion and business trends. Hemlines go up during boom times and come down with recession.This has been fairly consistent from the early 1960s, a time of terrific business growth when the first miniskirts, introduced by Mary Quant, set ramps on fire. Subsequent business cycles witnessed a parallel hemline cycle and made business forecasting in the West simple as well as easy on the eye! Just look the hemlines of skirts of ladies and you can fairly predict the upcoming business-trend!
Hemlines could provide a solution to the riddle of why business cycles in India are shallow and short-lived. George Taylor, the Business Economist of Wharton School of U S A after keen observation,deep study and analysis, propounded a theory in 1929, the year of the Great Depression in the West, that hemlines of women's skirts went up during economic booms and and their lengths increased during economic depressions. In good times, skirts grew shorter possibly because everyone wore silk stockings. But when times were bad, fewer women bought stockings ; hence skirts lengthened. As the West went through the gut-wrenching financial crisis and the economic downturn in 2008, India shrugged it off with a minor fall and a quick recovery. Some say that the answer lies in the saree which does not have a variable hemline. Unlike the fickle skirt whose hemline fluctuates periodically setting off economic cycles, the saree's unvarying length (actually the width) brings a reassuring stability to India's economic growth figures!:))))))))))))
ADDENDUM
A newspaper report says that the French luxury brand Hermes is launching a limited edition of four to five sarees in India in October, 2011. Each saree will be priced at US $ 1,800 (Rs 81,000 plus taxes) with another $ 500 for a matching blouse. The price is a little less than its first edition. Hermes had introduced its first collection of silk mousseline sarees in October, 2000, in its London store.These were designed by Sunita Kumar, wife of the former Indian Tennis player Naresh Kumar. Each piece carried the price-tag of British Pound 1200 plus 250 Pounds for the blouse!!!
Are you interested, L O H ?
ADDENDUM II
I read from The ET that since 2005, Kanchipuram silk sarees have been protected by Geographical Indication label which certifies their geographical origin and confirms adherence to some production standards. One of these standards is the mix of silver and gold in zari, the saree's decorative lace. So, without 57% of silver and 0.6% of gold in zari, a silk saree woven in Kanchipuram cannot be called a Kanchipuram!
That standard had virtually suffocated the weavers. As the prices of the precious metals have skyrocketed, to make 200 gms of zari now costs Rs. 15,000 in place of Rs. 6000 in 2010. The Govt. of Tamil Nadu in 2011 relaxed the condition to silver content of 40% and gold content to 0.5%.
The Geographical Indication norms ensure that a certain quality can be associated with a product made from specific geographical locations.
ADDENDUM III
Modern youngsters who wear sarees only on special occasions like marriages or pujas, feel that a saree although elegant, is restrictive. It becomes arduous to ride a two-wheeler or to get on and off buses while wearing a saree. In contrast, jeans and trousers provide greater mobility. So, redesigned sarees which can be worn over trousers or jeans and pleated knee-length 'sarinis' are picking up on popularity. Off course, traditionalists are opposing transformation of this six yards of unstitched elegance into trendy mini-skirts or fancy beach-wear.
A site for sari fans.
ReplyDeleteWhile some of it seems to be an excuse to look at pretty women, some of it is a great record of the saree.
Dear Arun,
ReplyDeleteIt is a good coincidence that your comment was on Valentine's Day!