Column

I was sitting outside an electronics store. The store was beautifully laid out and air-conditioned, but it was cool and breezy outside, so I sat there while the technicalities of buying a TV set were being completed by others in the family.

Idly, I watched those going in and coming out.

It dawned on me then that the hip, young crowd that was walking in was all dressed rather similarly. In jeans or pants and kurta top, or in rarer cases, salwar kameez. Most were couples, sometimes with a child in tow; many stepped out of cars; others came walking by, maybe because they lived close by.

Another day, at a mall, I was sitting and eating an ice cream cone and again indulging in my favourite pastime—watching people.

The same realisation came to me —that young people, even those who were not really in the know of fashion were dressing more and more in western wear.

Badly-cut pants, unwashed jeans, clod-like black sandals speaking one language, while smart kitten heels, fitted tees and low slung pants, and an occasional dress spoke quite another.

But the fact remained that they were all trying to speak the same language: that western was smart.

Those who did wear salwar sets were mostly drab; they flung their dupattas in careless ways, their bodies were stuffed in regardless of fit and cut, they were not really interested in clothes.

Ditto the women who were in saris. Their pallus were flung on their shoulders with all the flourish of a waiter flinging a towel over his arm; their cholis, though matching, rode awkwardly on the tyres that bounced around their middle regions.

Was there no one, I wondered, who took pride in draping a sari right, with style?

Of course there were, but not here. Yet, this slice of humanity I was looking at was the real India. The India that was moving up the ladder, two steps at a time; the India that every Westerner was aware of; the India of the numbers, the vast middle class waiting to be seduced into a new way of life.

Then a week later I was at Fashion Week. Where the style statements were decidedly stylish but, again, decidedly western. Beautiful, branded, well-crafted clothes, worn with élan.

Trying to be different, I wore a sari through the event.

Simple unembellished silks, each a representative of the Indian traditions we are so proud of talking about.

I could not have been more conspicuous if I had tried.

Suddenly, everyone wanted to know where the sari was from, which designer I was wearing.

The fact was, I was not. The sari that evoked the most attention was a simple silk from Bengal, one that my husband had got for me in the first year of our marriage. The white silk with a red border that epitomises Bengal, which for me symbolises the essence of femininity.

Of course, those who knew their textiles knew exactly what I was wearing. The rest—and that included the many curious young journalists covering the event—had never heard about or seen the sari that is a feature in almost every connoisseur’s wardrobe.

Which leads me to the next point that hits my mind.

When I was younger, I rebelled against the diktat against wearing jeans, and enjoyed wearing pants and a top to work. It still makes me feel ‘professional’. But when I want to feel Indian and feminine and delicate, I enjoy my collection of long skirts and churidar kurtas and, though the times are less common now, saris.

I read a nice line today at a YSL perfume presentation: “Never become a prisoner of a single attitude.”

I think we in India can so easily avoid that, spoilt as we are for choice. I wish I could tell all the women at the malls that!

Email:ssaran@dnaindia.net