Sari saga

I think I graduated to some new level of Indian-ness today: I bought my first sari. (Wow, I guess that means I'm planning to acquire more over the course of my life. After I saw what went into buying the first one, I might want to hesitate before considering any more sari purchases.)

In another wonderful display of Indian-ness, my Sanskrit teacher -- whom I've known for about three weeks -- invited me to her brother's engagement party, which will take place this Saturday. Just as I readily accepted, my classmate G informed me that we would be going sari-shopping. Now, I brought barely any clothes to India with me, and my entire wardrobe currently consists of cotton slacks and casual salwar tops. I wasn't expecting the engagement party to be a jeans event, but I thought I could get away with buying a nice salwar kameez and putting on some mascara.

I thought wrong.

Turns out engagement parties are *definitely* sari-only occasions. The brightest, silkiest, most bejeweled of salwar kameez sets simply will not do. It has to be a sari -- and the flashier, the better.

So today my two Sanskrit teachers, my two classmates R and G, and R's two friends who were visiting with him, went sari shopping. We walked into a huge department store on Laxmi Road, bypassed mannequins dressed in what seemed to be pure diamonds stuck together with some thin fabric, and entered one of the floors of the department store reserved for saris alone. This was the "casual" sari floor -- above us was the "designer saris and bridal wear" floor. What I saw before me was incredible. There were saris floor-to-ceiling on shelves that stretched around the perimeter of the room; each sari was folded up into a little pack so that only the main color and the border peeked out. There was a huge pile of sandals at the entrance to the room. There were what looked like large mattresses spread out on the entire floor, with only narrow passageways left between them so that shop attendants could carry sky-high stacks of saris to customers. Whole families -- mothers, fathers, daughters, sons-in-law, babies, grandmothers, cousins -- sat on the mattresses examining sari after sari, shifting through massive piles of saris that had been unfolded and subsequently discarded. I have never seen so much color in one room. I have never seen so much expensive silk in one place, not to mention strewn all over the room in total disorder: it was as if each singular, elegant, delicately-crafted sari were just another scrap of fabric.

We spread ourselves out on a mattress and soon we had made a pretty big discard pile for ourselves. G selected a simple, deep red sari with a silver pattern embroidered on it. I decided on a deep blue sari with a pale green, shiny border. (Okay, so it was the first one I tried on. I really didn't have the energy required to sift through yet more saris and, from those, pick a few to try on.) One of my Sanskrit teachers took digital photos so that we could see what we looked like. Unsurprisingly, we also got some unsolicited feedback from the other customers.

But that was only the beginning. Then we had to go have blouses measured and fitted, and we had to buy petticoats that matched the colors of our saris more or less perfectly. When the whole thing was over (and it still isn't over -- everything still has to be tailor-made and picked up after two days) I went home, made a pot of chai, looked at my Sanskrit grammar sheet, and gave up on doing homework for the night. So now I must wake up early tomorrow morning to read the Venisamhara, and thus I must stop writing on my blog and get myself out of the Shree Cyber Cafe. Good night, folks, and I would appreciate any tips on how to wear a sari without falling over my own feet.