The yardstick of time

Some days ago when I worked my way into a sari, I felt – rather unusually - comfortable. Gone was that familiar puffed out, wriggly, stuck-to-something feeling which I have for many years associated with the sari. A frightening doubt gnawed its way like canker into my mind…

Time was when draping a sari seemed a terrible ritual. It needed time and space besides a load of safety pins. The air conditioner, too, to help me keep cool, while the six yards of cloth went round and round me and got tucked and stuck into all the right places (and held there with pins- a substitute for self-confidence and the social graces.)

Pins! How many I would need to hold my sari in place! The pleats needed them, the pallu, the waist even. And often at functions, a vicious pin would decide to open up and prick me just when I would not be in a position to do anything about it. Painful memories!

Saris for occasions, I would fume. Only under unavoidable circumstances. Like other people’s weddings. And your own ,of course. You couldn’t get married in a churidar, or jeans, not on your life, not even today, ten years into the twenty-first century.
And that instrument of torture, that symbol of the trappings of feminity that no Indian woman has ever escaped, that weapon of soul destruction that programmes one to be constantly conscious of oneself, that diabolical invention that keeps women entangled and preoccupied in their own clothing – why do I now feel so comfortable in it?

And why, to continue the introspection, do I find it so easy to wear one these days? The time between two rings of the telephone is all I need now, to drape a sari around myself. As for pins, why it must be some years since I even saw one.
“Just experience,” my husband says, in a voice that sounds most insincerely comforting. I look at his face probingly, but he is inscrutable. All those years of domesticity have bounced off on him, I observe to myself, and realize with shock that it is now nearly two decades since we came together in holy matrimony. That’s a lot of time, I think slowly. (How did we ever manage?)The canker grows insidiously.

As I bustle out of the room, ready for the outing, my daughter gives me the onceover, as only a brattish, overconfident, self-opinionated teenager can. “You look like a..a…a..a…” I wait hopefully as she searches for the right word – and there it comes: “a school teacher… with your glasses, you hair done up in a bun, and this crisp cotton sari.” The canker spreads fast. What could she mean? Did she mean I was - well, you know, not so young any more?

Of course, I don’t let my hair down – literally I mean – any more. It irks me when wisps break free and tickle my neck and ears. I gather it all up into one big bun and try to forget about it.

Besides, in a bun, those streaks of gray and silver don’t show. Anyway, there were just a couple of them. They didn’t mean a thing. Even teenagers have them. Bad water, pollution, and all that. But you wouldn’t want them to show, right?

The glasses – the doctor did suggest contact lens, but the thought of a foreign body inside my eye makes me uncomfortable. He also suggested refractive surgery, but all this new-fangled technology cuts no ice with me. I can’t believe that short sight can be cured – no matter what the experts say, no mater what the internet says. The doc said I didn’t need bifocals – of course not, what could he mean? Young people don’t need bifocals.

“You don’t wear those synthetic clingy saris any more, don’t you?” my daughter’s voice breaks through my reverie, as she goes to the mirror and starts adjusting her hair. “What are you going to do with them? You have about a dozen of them, don’t you?” I consider.

Yes, she was right. Why did not wear my synthetic saris anymore? My chiffons and georgettes. I shook my head. They kept sliding off one’s waist and shoulders. “Sliding off?” my daughter gave a bellow of most-unladylike laughter. “maybe they did then. Surely not now?”

The canker reared its ugly head gleefully. Now? Yes, it was different now, let me face it square on, I sighed. The waist and shoulders were amply rounded: no sari, no matter what its mettle, could slide off any more. I felt uncomfortable.
Even three layers of the stuff couldn’t effectively conceal the folds of flab. I really must start doing yoga. I had learnt yoga while at school. What was that asana which won me a prize …how could I forget? Was I getting old? Old? Me? Surely not? Laughable thought! Or was it?