Day 42. A beige Tangail. This sari was a gift from one of my aunts, Sarmishtha Kakima, to my mother Jhulan Bhattacharya. It was meant to be a pronami (gift for elders) on the occasion of her daughter’s wedding. My Ma (and everyone else) loved the sari at first glance. It’s elegant and classy. And then came the question every woman asks when she loves a sari… “Eta kotha theke kena (where did you buy this)?”. The reply: Dhiren Biren. So when my aunt (mother’s sister) was in town a month or so later, she saw the sari and immediately headed for the shop. Come Puja and we were back again at the shop, not too far from where Sarmistha Kakima had her wedding reception. It’s one of the two weddings etched in my mind from my childhood (the other being my own uncle’s). I was may be six or seven when Sarmistha Kakima got married to my Ranju Kaku (my father’s cousin). He, along with his brothers, had always been among my favourite uncles. Right from when I was very little, I remember them dropping in at our home for adda. So I must have been pretty excited about the wedding. I remember my aunt (father’s sister) had dressed up the bride at our family home as I sat there mesmerised. To this day, my mother can’t stop talking about how Sarmistha Kakima was perhaps the first bride she had seen without her ears pierced. She actually had special clip-on earrings! At the reception, I remember wearing a maroon velvet skirt with a pale pink frilly blouse that Ma had got specially made for me. I had just lost my front tooth and there I was in almost every photograph of the bride, posing by her side, sometimes desperately trying to hide my missing tooth and at times just forgetting and smiling! This was also perhaps the only wedding (thank God) where I only lasted on chicken stew. I was just recovering from back-to-back bouts of mumps and jaundice and that is all I was allowed to eat. And I like a good girl 😉 ate it without a fuss. Only on the last day, I requested for an ice cream and was granted my wish.