This was my saree number 8/100 of #100sareepact, also worn a long time back in July 2015, in which I channel my inner 1960s Bollywood heroine (rather unsuccessfully, I might add).

While this saree doesn’t qualify as a vintage “weave”, it is one that holds special memories since it belonged to my mother and is almost 50 years old.

Here is the story of the saree.

It was 1968 and my mother who had gotten married a couple of years back, had set her heart on a gauzy white sari with silver embroidery. No readymade saris matched her vision of this dream sari and so, an order was placed at a fancy store in Ranchi (where she lived with my father’s family back then) and this beauty came back in some weeks from Lucknow, embroidered daintily with silver thread and sequins.

I haven’t been able to hunt down any pictures of Mom in this sari, but it must have looked lovely on her. Years later, this kind of sparkly white sari would be known as the ‘Chandni sari’, made famous by Sridevi in a movie by the same name.

The white is now a little yellowed, but the filigree-like embroidery is still the stuff dreams are made of. I recently got a blouse in a contrast acid green made, to wear with it and I’ve paired it for the pact, with traditional silver jewellery from Jharkhand, which is also a purchase my mother made in the 1960s.

Fittingly, the accompanying soundtrack for whenever I wear this sari, has to be the 1969 chartbuster featuring Shammi Kapoor, “Badan Pe Sitare Lapete Huey”!