Never say sari!

(Again, I cheat a little. This was published Sunday...)

I first wore my grandmother’s wedding sari when I was 15, to a wedding reception. The gold threads checked over the heavy emerald green silk glimmered under the bright lights and the almost-solid gold work on the red border was more brilliant than any jewellery worn that evening. It weighed me down to the point of exhaustion; the zari work on it was gorgeous, heavy, enduring. It was stored in my mother’s closet, cuddled in soft silk and gently scented with sandalwood. And when I took it out a few days ago to look at it, admire it, treasure it, I found that it had not aged well at all. The green of the body had faded to an unsightly patchy paleness and the gold had weighed down the fabric so that it was shredding and, in fact, tore wit a dreadful sound even as I lifted it delicately to check how badly it was damaged. Many self-recriminations and some tears later, I had to conclude that there was little that could be done to save it. But what could be done with it?

The saris my mother left behind will probably last some years longer, but the few that she inherited from her family need urgent attention, never mind that they have been babied and protected from bugs and the elements alike with more care than the family itself perhaps got. There are a number of small streetside shops in Kalbadevi who have a solution to this problem, one that many women today must face when they consider their own sartorial heritage. One that I have been to on occasion is run by a gentleman who is very careful with not just the garment, but also the feelings of those who bring it in to him. He sits on a soft cotton gadda in a small shop set into the wall of a building just across the way from the famous silver bazaar behind Mumba Devi temple, and hordes hundreds of rolls of silk strips in specially built drawers lining the space. And he shows off his treasures – this border came from a wedding sari from a royal family, he says, as he unrolls a dazzling length of gem-studded silk. And this, it shows a whole army – see, here are soldiers and elephants and even guns!

As he speaks, he evaluates the sari you have brought him. He is gentle, understanding that the piece is woven through with memories and some sadness. But see, the silk is shredding, so it is no use keeping that. But the border is still lovely; this is not real gold, it is silver that had been plated or washed – he holds a match to a single thread he pulls out of the zari. He weighs the sari, makes elaborate and mysterious calculations keeping the day’s gold and silver prices in mind, and then suggests a price. He will save the border for someone – and many come to buy, fashion designers, sari shops, people who want something special to use on their clothes, even foreigners who will add these touches of ‘exotica’ to their sofa cushions or curtains – not to long ago, Bloomingdales in New York had a sellout line of organza, crepe and tissue curtains edges with antique sari borders. Or else he will melt down the precious metal in unusable saris to form a small lump of silver, perhaps even gold, to be sold to jewelers in the same loop.

Many of these sari borders are the mainstay of small shops in Kalbadevi, Chor Bazaar and the various fabric markets in the city. Yusuf Sareewala runs one such store, which stocks thousands of borders typical of various cultures – from the old Parsi garas, Maharashtrian, Gujarati, South Indian, Orissa and so many other forms of weaving and embellishment. This is where many of the big-name designers find treasures that they use in their own work – Neeta Lulla and Manish Malhotra, for instance.

But a heritage sari does not always have to be cut up and reused or its border sold and used by someone else to create new fashion. Designers suggest keeping the vintage drape, but updating it with a more ‘today’ blouse - Gaurav Bhatia, for one, who with his wife Pratima works on creating exquisitely ornate garments, says, “We never encourage a wedding sari being cut up — that would almost be sacrilege! There are ways to drape it that will make it re-usable. And you can always give it a twist with unique blouses.”

A new blouse will not save my grandmother’s wedding sari. But maybe the gentle-man in Kalbadevi can help keep some of my heritage alive.