Deconstructing the Saree – The Blouse Colour

Scene 1: Flashback
The heroine carries her saree to the Matching Center or Blouse Piece Shop. The shop is a treat to her eyes. Rows of graded shades of blouse material, similar to the one shown at the top of my picture. She hands over the saree to the counter boy and says ‘2by2’ or ‘2by1’ or ‘satin’ or whatever her material of choice is. He folds the saree in a special way and pads off to the relevant hue section, with the heroine keeping an eagle eye on him. If she is a regular in the shop, the boy knows that she likes to match her blouse piece to the border/pallu/body/flower/some arbitrary part of the saree. He comes back with a few bales that he thinks are the closest matches. The untrained eye cannot make out the difference between any of those shades, but she knows! She carries her saree and the bales of blouse material to the door/window of the shop to ensure that the single layer of the saree and the blouse piece are perfect matches. In bigger shops, she has to jostle for that bit of precious sunlight with the other matching ladies. She selects one shade, asks the boy to cut a certain length, and walks out with a tiny brown packet containing the carefully selected matched blouse piece, thinking about the tailor already.

Scene 2: Current Day
She picks out a saree from her wardrobe to wear. She checks what mood she is in – total contrast/somewhat matching/exactly matching. And she chooses a blouse from her random collection to wear with the saree. No trysts with the matching center counter boy, no jostling for space in the square of sunlight. Buying a blouse has nothing to do with a particular saree color anymore.

Just mix, match and go!

So here I am wearing a somewhat matching blouse from a different saree, a totally contrast blouse and a perfectly matching blouse for my Saree numbers 20, 21 and 22 on the #100sareepact.