57/100. You know Durga Pujo is around the corner when just about every conversation is about Pujo shopping and pandal hopping.
Pujo is about rituals and traditions and not just the ones that come with specific chants. An essential part of Pujo is going shopping with every single one of your friend groups – maybe gifts one day, shoes the next and that impulse-buy day as well.
As I have grown older, my closet always seems to have at least three-four new-old and old-new clothes, making Pujo shopping actually redundant. But certain rituals never become old. One – that your parents will give you money to buy something or the other. Two – that you will get something for your parents. Three – that there will be one day of Pujo shopping with colleagues.
This year, ritual two and ritual three coincided when three of us friends in office decided to ‘help’ our young male colleague buy a saree for his mother. This is his first job, and so this gift was even more significant. So a plan was made to go saree shopping on Saturday after office. I knew this had the makings of a lovely saree story, so I asked my friends to wear sarees as well, to which they readily agreed.
I must mention here that our young man is not only uncomfortable with shopping, he is also perpetually puzzled at the pretty-much-zero level of self consciousness that all three of us some share. So, to minimise the risk of us embarrassing him, he had set us a non-negotiable time period of thirty minutes within which we had to help him buy the saree. We decided to take him to Byloom – a store where we were sure he would find something beautiful within the stipulated period.
So, off we went and what a fun time we had admiring the beautiful weaves and the lively colours of the sarees. Not to mention holding sarees in every colour of the natural world against ourselves and preening.
Long story short – not only did we manage to help him buy a saree (an elegant grey muslin with a black and red border), we managed to embarrass the life out of him as well. By taking our time scouting for nice ‘backgrounds’, by posing without any cares about curious onlookers and by insisting on photograph after photograph till one was deemed adequately pretty. And before he disowned us completely, finding a somewhat secluded place where we could click a ‘wefie’.
We made our peace with him over kadak chai and cool kulfis. And as we went our separate ways once we were done, I knew as embarrassed as he might have felt, we had created a forever -memory. Not only for him but for ourselves as well.
And the sarees that will star forever in this forever-memory were a beautiful red-and-green silk Gadwal on Upasana, a smart grey-and-maroon Ikat on Jonaki and a classic Byloom Aabir saree in orange and fuchsia on me. ?