The first time I wore a sari in India

Usually, I don't feel comfortable wearing a sari, so I don't. It makes me feel self-counscious and I am always afraid some disaster will happen while I'm wearing it. I did after all manage to tear a salwar kamiz on the way to the family temple, angering my MIL and having lots of strangers laugh a my face... until someone finally told me there was a slight problem... so imagine what could happen with a sari !

But last time we went to India, I took my plain cotton handloom sari with me, and I was overjoyed to find a matching stretchy blouse to go with it. Nodoby can tear a stretchy blouse, right ? I wanted to dress up for the family. As it happened we were there for an important family wedding and nobody took special interest in me (apart from telling me off for things my husband did or didn't do, and asking me to bless the bride and groom once the marriage hall was almost empty).... For the wedding I wore two salwar outfits I'd bought in France.

Then we went on a trip and I used the sari as a blanket for the baby in the car. Suddenly hubby decides to stop in Trichy. Usually foreigners are not allowed to see the god in that temple, but someone told hubby if I wore a saree and jasmin flowers and looked hindu, then they may let me in. So I had to struggle alone in the bathroom to wrap myself in a blanket-sari while hubby and his nephew were doing something... What an ordeal. But it gave me the right to queue 3 hours to have a glimpse of the god and give him lotus flowers and tulsi (and then have the tulsi shoved back in my face by a grudging priest)...

Anyways. Hubby took pictures of me outside the temple. My MIL said I had a village sari but she liked my stretchy blouse. My Tamil girlfriends later told me I wrapped the sari in grandmother style. No wonder they let me in as a local in the temple lol... and our last day in India, my MIL gave me a gorgeous purple sari.

Then recently someone told me in India if a woman doesn't look her best, people think she is unhappy in marriage. Oh dear.

The sari incident

A few weeks ago I asked my embroidery teacher to show me how to wear a sari. My husband has often asked me to wear one, but I felt nervous about this and was convinced western women in sari look foolish. It's true the first demo of how to wear a sari had been made to me by my husband trying to show it on himself with a green chiffon sari and we laughed a lot.

Little by little, seeing pictures of other western women married to Indian men wearing saris, I changed my mind.

My teacher explained that often on the end of the sari, some extra material is included to make a blouse, and showed how to recognize it. She also explained that you must line the bottom front of the sari. I came home very excited and showed my husband what I'd learnt.

Then I decided to have a blouse and petticoat made for my favourite sari. We went to a tailor shop in the Indian quarter and I tried to explain that I wanted lining for the sari and a blouse. The man spoke very little French so communication was difficult but I trusted my husband would do the translating.

However, it seems in Tamil Nadu they don't line the sari if it has a heavy border (my teacher is from the North East) as my MIL confirmed.

Then a few days later, we went back to the tailor shop. The blouse was too tight, and they had stitched the sari into a kind of skirt ! I was furious. Later a friend told me in India they prepare saries in that way only for very young children grrr....

A lot of talking followed, the blouse was enlarged. More talking followed and a lot of laughing. I asked DH what that was all about. It turns out he was feeling bad for the shop owner and to make him feel good he'd said now the owner was OK but that he would be getting more tension at home from me. And the shop owner replied "give her a kiss, it will be alright".

Isn't that sweet ?

In a way maybe the reason I got so many surprising good experiences in India was because my husband is smoothing things up all the time :o)