Day 61. This block-printed Chanderi from Bunkari is sari 3 of my anniversary sari loot (yes, and one more to go! That’s why I call it a loot!). And this story needs a quick recap like all good serials. And the sari saga is no less than a mega serial (without the evil saas and tortured bahus I hope), with its huge cast if characters, each one with her own storyline. Here, I am digressing, just like those never-ending soaps. To get back to track, flashback to my anniversary in May. My sister-in-law Sarmistha and brother-in-law gifted me two saris with accessories to match. Or rather, two sets of accessories with saris to match. I wore one of those saris, a sea green printed mulmul, on Day 37 on the pact with the story of how Sarmistha had got the accessories made and then gone hunting for the saris. She had gifted me something else too… a story to go with the accessories which I had promised to tell later. Now’s as good a time as can be to tell that story then. The beads that make up the neckpieces and earrings (the ones I wore today and the ones I wore with green sari on Day 37, resharing that picture as comment) had actually belonged to my mother-in-law. She had bought them many many years ago. The white ones with black inscription (strung with red beads) were bought on a trip to Darjeeling and the beige dholak-shaped ones (strung with green beads) from Rajgir. My husband was just a toddler at the time of these trips. My mother-in-law hardly ever wore them but my husband and his brother remember playing with the colourful beads as children. As they grew up, and the family changed houses, the beads lay forgotten in a drawer in my mother-in-law’s dressing table. Almost four decades later, they resurfaced during another house move. My mother-in-law was all but throwing them away when my sister-in-law spotted them and rescued them. And they remained with her for another two years, before she made up her mind to put them to use. With help from a colleague who makes jewellery, she got the beads strung into neckpieces and earrings to gift me.
The look on my mother-in-law, my husband and his brother’s faces on seeing those beads was yet another gift. Those tiny beads had, in a matter of seconds, transported them back to many many years ago, to another time, another life… innocent, simple and happy.
To wear a sari and accessories as special as these, I needed an occasion as deserving. This evening I was visiting a favourite uncle and aunt for some good ol’ adda. For them, I never grow up from the little girl that I was. If that’s not celebration enough, they are also loyal followers of my sari posts. Here’s to a Sunday evening well-spent and many more such happy times.