Column

Just the other day my sister was walking down the stairs of Cottage Industries in New Delhi. Walking up were two middle-aged women who had NRI written all over them: comfortable walking shoes, big hand bags, yesteryear’s kurtis and an expression of bemused confusion. The two stopped when they saw her. Sorry, make that saw her wine-coloured tussar silk sari. They didn’t quite say: “Oh, my God you are wearing a sari!!” but did use words to that effect. The two were visiting from Europe and were shocked by the absence of saris on the streets of Delhi.

It was almost as if they had perchance happened upon the Holy Grail: “Can we feel the silk,” asked one of them. I imagine my sister, Nina Puri, mustn’t have been too surprised by their eager-beaver interest in what she was wearing. A fortnight earlier coming out of the British Library in London, she encountered a similar reaction to her sari from a young Brit-desi. Obviously, saris are getting to be a rare species of apparel, even in the diaspora. There are times when you can’t spot even one in the desi shopping heaven, Oxford Street.

The sari isn’t quite going the kimono way. But it seems to change its status often. I use the word status the way millions now use it on Facebook — the latest public confessional — to describe their state of being at that precise moment. The versatile drape — “five and a half yards of pure mischief” as fashion designer Suneet Varma once memorably described this unstitched apparel sari to me — has been leading something of a see-saw existence.

Until fairly recently, the sari had been banished to the realm of behenji-dom. It even began to be pushed to the sidelines in Bollywood, beginning with the millennium. If at all actors Katrina Kaif, Deepika Padukone, Kareena Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra wore saris, they were more like costumes, basically wedding wear. For younger women a sari reeked of convention; it was the very antithesis of modernity.

For a growing number of older women the sari became the antithesis of freedom; it chained them to the past. Not only did they feel more emancipated in pants and dresses, they also saw themselves as more cosmopolitan in western attire.

The ‘status’ of a sari has changed yet again. Ever since Hollywood actresses and international celebrities have been flirting with saris (Madonna, Elizabeth Hurley, Posh Beckham, Goldie Hawn, Gisele Bundchen, and most recently, Jessica Simpson) have worn them with elan, the sari has reclaimed its ‘cool’ status in the rule books of our fashionistas. Certainly, the fact that Gianni Versace and Galliano had adapted the sari was not lost on them.

The sari is also being sexed-up in the homeland, for the Bright Young Things. Actually, it’s the blouse that has undergone the more radical metamorphosis. “An accessory of differentiation”, as the ever-quotable Varma describes it, the sari blouse allows a woman to express her personality: bold, coy or orthodox. And yes, flaunt her oomph factor.

So, in came the designer halter necks, Chinese collar blouses, corset blouses, embroidered or lace blouses, blouses encrusted with crystals or pearls, off-shoulder blouses. Backless blouses started escorting the sari. And then came the ultimate show stopper — the absent blouse. The photograph of Gisele Bundchen in a green sari, unaccompanied by a blouse recently graced the cover of a fashion magazine.

I suppose it is back to the future. Before the Victorians imposed their moral code in India, women in many communities didn’t wear blouses. As for the sexy sari: Can anything better Raj Kapoor’s iconic wet sari scenes or Smita Patil frolicking in the rain with Amitabh Bachchan in Namak Halal?

As for aunties like me, the sari is forever: It reveals but it can also conceal as much as you want.