How to wear a sari

Wear a sari like an Indian woman.   That is to say, wear it like it came from your mother’s closet, like it was the same sari your grandmother wore on her wedding day many years ago.   Never mind that you’re not really Indian, and your mother never really owned a sari, much less learned how to wear one.   Find a mother in the woman who does teach you to wear one. If you are so fortunate, there will be a group of them, all excited to educate you in the mysterious science of pleating, tucking, folding, and draping.     Watch as the walls around them crumble and their reserved exteriors fade as they fall on you like bees to a blossoming flower. Watch their deft fingers make sense of the cumbersome cloth, and try to forget the fact that you will never be able to do what they are doing when you are on your own.   Watch them take a step back and sigh when they finish, the way an artist does when he admires a newly-completed masterpiece. Delight in the laughter you will hear for the first time as they twirl you around to admire their handiwork. Celebrate the truth that fashion has always been a bonding point for women across generations and time zones, and that this is especially true for the sari.   Wear a sari with the understanding that it is more than a piece of cloth, but a piece of history.   Remember that learning to wear it is an heirloom in itself, passed on from mother to daughter, from generation to generation.   Remember that it was in a sari that Indira Gandhi broke ground as India’s first female prime minister, that Sushmita Sen brought home the Miss Universe crown, that Mother Teresa cared for Kolkata’s poor.   Remember the Mahabharata, and how it was an endless sari that saved Draupadi from rape.   Wear a sari effortlessly. Forget that the cloth could fall off at any moment and that the drapes easily get caught in your sandals. Take your cue from the Indian women who do everything in their saris.   Watch the way they cook, clean, do the laundry, nurse babies, run after hyperactive children, teach, shop, and even clamber up the narrow ladders of a sleeper train, seemingly unhampered by the yards of cloth that cling precariously to their bodies. Watch how they keep their saris perfectly in place.   Take a nap in your sari. Find comfort in the soft silk as you drift off to sleep. Surprise yourself at finding it still held together when you wake up.   Wear a sari and dance. Test the strength of the folds and the pins that keep it together. Trust in them, and the women who put them on you.  

Wear a sari with confidence.   Disregard the fact that the sari will hide all the parts you’d rather show off and magnificently expose that curry-fattened part you would rather hide—Indian women don’t apologize for their love handles. Listen to them congratulate you on your curves. Ride their excitement, let it sweep you away so that you don’t feel self-conscious as you strip bare and wear the cropped sari blouse.   Believe in that conspiratorial wink the women give when they say, “You have the body of an Indian woman.”   Bask in the sweetness of the compliments you will inevitably be showered with. Count the compliments but don’t let it get to your head—in a sari, everyone becomes Aishwarya Rai.   Trust when people tell you how beautiful you are, especially when the women say it, because they know better.   Wear a sari, because even while some say it is fading into obsolescence, it remains unparalleled in beauty.  Wear a sari, because wearing it turns strangers into mothers and sisters, and plain foreign girls into Indian princesses in exactly the same way that a formless swathe of cloth becomes a powerful garment of great design. – GMA News