Day 76. This peach and green dure (striped) Tangail is one of my most favourite saris from my trousseau. I love surprises and this sari was just that. My mother-in-law had taken me along when she shopped for my saris but this wasn’t bought that day. This was a surprise addition in my tottwo (decorated trays of gifts for the bride) and I fell in love with it at first sight. It’s the colour that I love more than anything else… that beautiful shade of the sky when the first rays of the sun light it up or when its last rays dress it up before bidding adieu till the next morning or that colour that happiness brings to your cheeks.
I had been waiting to wear this sari for some time but the last time I took it out I realised I needed a new blouse. That came a couple of days ago and last night I took out the sari along with the rest of the paraphernalia and kept them neatly stacked and all ready for today.
Just as I would clean and wash my white canvas shoes and lay out my white uniform on a chair the night before Independence Day. I was never an early riser and so I had devised this method of gaining those few precious extra minutes of sleep in the morning by keeping my school uniform the night before. And Independence Day meant going to school a little earlier with that all-important feeling that tiny volunteer or monitor’s badge earned you. Standing at the head of the line, watching the flag being hoisted, hearing the principal speak and then the most important part…the packet of snacks that each one of us got. I still remember those packets from G Pulla Reddy with a little bit of mixture and a sweet. I quite despised those too-sweet sweets and would never have them on any other day. But in school that day, we would all devour it happily. When I went back to school after 25 years with my friends last month and stood on that ground where we would stand in attention, saluting the flag, the memories rushed back. And when I went to the Pulla Reddy shop a day later, they came gushing again, along with the smell of ghee wafting in the air. That same smell that had seemed overpowering at one time now seemed sweet. Such is the power of nostalgia, of memories, of love.