#100sareepact #sareefrommypast (1/100)

Red, gold and green. One of my favourite combos for Indian attire is red and green.

Wore this sari at my cousin brother’s wedding in Bombay, almost four years ago. It was a colourful affair filled with joy, laughter, humour, relatives, rain, fantastic food, travel, late nights and early mornings, talking till our throats were sore, lobbying for bathrooms – basically, tons of fun! My sari from Chennai is a red, green and gold combination, traditional colours for an Indian wedding.

The 2nd photo is with cousins and nephew and the 3rd photo has a pic of all the groom’s girl cousins sitting in a row and making demands from him! You can see the bride’s flower-bedecked plaited hair in the pic as well. It was great fun teasing him and asking for bribes from gold jewellery, cash deposits, luxury cars and electronic gadgets!! It is one of the rituals of the wedding and so we had a field day pulling their legs since we had ‘authorised’ backing!!

I had a great time and fond memories of the trip to Bombay after eons, after having spent my childhood years growing up there. Still consider myself a Bombay-ite at heart. And no, I cannot bear to say Mumbai! After the wedding festivities, we stayed back to catch up with old friends after so many years, and surprisingly shopped very little. Our focus was to revisit what we could of the city and and meet as many people as we could in the time that we had. It was a memorable trip in more ways than one. Just like the twists and turns that life hands us, there were also a few downs along with the many ups.

All sorts of events happened and to top it all we even ended up losing my grandmother’s gold necklace, a family heirloom–we definitely lost a good deal of hair from all the stress! It was quite the adventure. Once a trip out of the city, we faced every trouble possible – a car breakdown, lost the way, till we eventually ended up at a remote village resort with no one around for miles, it was fraught with danger and fear because we were 3 women in the midst of 8 strange men! Again, life turns things around, and with the romance of Bombay monsoons, we experienced refreshing cool air, the abundant and lush green glory of nature and the mountains and fields engulfing us through the commute and with a renewed spirit to put that awful experience behind us, we returned to the city and made an amazing discovery– the necklace was mysteriously back after a harrowing week!! The Universe sure works in mysterious ways.

Coming back to the saree, I wore it for the first time after purchase only on the day of the wedding and found to my horror, that it had very few pleats and simply wouldn’t ‘fall’ or ‘stand’ well at all. Given that my saree wearing episodes were extremely few and far between, this was the last thing I needed!! My cousin sister Shalu patiently draped it for me since I was too busy throwing a tantrum! Many thanks to her for coming to my aid! However, the saree was stiff and I was stiffer!!

Despite all the comedy of errors, I did enjoy wearing a saree that day for the first time in a long time. 🙂