This is the second in a series of fabulous reader guest posts. In an early "fashion" blog entry, I talked about celebrating my diverse and beautiful friends, and these new guest posts are dedicated to that idea. This post is from my (gorgeous) friend and fellow 4th-grade parent, Radhika Barrett. I saw her at our school's auction the other night, looking absolutely stunning in her red Sari. You can imagine my delight when she giggled shyly and whispered to me, "I'm totally going to blog about this outfit later."
I am truly moved by what she wrote. Thank you so much, Radhika. Enjoy, all!
I am truly moved by what she wrote. Thank you so much, Radhika. Enjoy, all!
An Ode to a Sari, or the Musings of a Culturally Mixed-Up Blogger by Radhika Barrett
My friend has a fashion blog. I know she air quotes it, but that’s because she is as self-deprecating as she is fearless. There’s something important about fashion that she’s articulating, that has nothing to do with deconstructed hemlines (I may have just made that up, but doesn’t it sound like it could be a thing from NYC fashion week?) or coral being the new black. RachL is talking about what she’s wearing in her life as she’s going about living it; a dress for a dinner with policy wonks, “ironic” boots, clothes picked out for running a 5K, cardigans for teaching English lit. But to me, she’s saying something powerful: clothes are a running statement on our identity. I never thought about it before, not really. Of course, I’ve thought about what I should wear to this event or that, but I’ve never understood the deeper reasons why I have misgivings about my choices (other then this does make my butt look big) or why I feel like I’m pretending to be something other than I am. But this was what crystallized in my head yesterday evening as I stood in my wardrobe evaluating my options for a night at the School Auction.
The question was: a sari, or a black cocktail dress?
The sun was coming in through the window opposite the wardrobe and caught the glow of the red silk; six yards, neatly folded into a rectangle and hanging on a prosaic dry-cleaner-issued hanger. There’s an inner fire to tussar, a hand-woven silk from India, that is hard to describe. It makes me want to cry, it’s that lyrical. I remembered falling in love with this sari as my mother and I sat in a sari emporium two summers ago…
Despite the images of a busy, chaotic country, sari shopping in India is a very civilized activity. You are welcomed into the shop with a cup of tea or coffee. You are seated in a comfortable chair in this oasis of calm; your sales person, your guide to this world, asks after your health, your family’s health and makes a polite remark or two about the weather and traffic. Then, you enter a world of absolute sensory delight. Saris are draped on you, on chairs near you and on the guide himself, to show off the exquisite details. Saris from every part of India: the gorgeous silks of the South with the temple borders; the shimmering, beaded work from the North and West, making you remember long-forgotten history lessons of Mughal queens; the pure colors and patterns of the East. For me, coherent thought ceases and I want to dive into the pile. If I crawl in, maybe they won’t notice me and I can just live in this world? Picking one is like being asked to pick a favorite child, but I came home that expedition with the red tussar silk shot with gold.
I looked at it in the afternoon sunlight and I missed home. And here’s where the musings began. True, I am born of Indian parents and was born in India. My parents left India for various parts of the world when I was four and I travelled with them, making sojourns in Tanzania and Papua-New-Guinea before I went back to school in India as an awkward twelve year old. I lived in Hyderabad, India, with my grandparents and then my mother, for the next eight years, until I came here for graduate school. So, I’ve spent more time in the U.S.A than I have anywhere else; I became an adult here, I met and married an American man here, had my three amazing kids here, got divorced here and discovered myself here. So what is home? Why does a sari make me think of home? The home I knew when I left India long ago is, in ways small and large, almost unrecognizable now. The house I walk into now, in this country, with the sunlight and the wardrobe with the sari and the black cocktail dress hanging in it, it is the place I long to be when I’m tired. It’s here. So what is home, to a culturally mixed-up blogger? What is my identity?
The question wasn’t about the sari or the Calvin Klein black cocktail dress. The question was and is something else. It hovers in the background all the time as I live my life; it elbows its way into the foreground as I stand in my closet and look at my clothes. Am I a tall boots and denim jacket girl today, or am I going to choose an Indian tunic? Will I wear my Indian shawl today or my wool scarf from Scotland? I look Indian. Do I look typical in this country? Do people think I’m trying to fit in? Should I fit in? Who the hell am I?
And that, RachL, is when I realize that I do fit in. You ask these questions, coming to them from your cultural background and your American experience. I ask these questions, coming to them from my cultural background, my American experience and my own brand of crazy. I suspect that we all ask ourselves the same kind of questions. Your fashion blog is a group of people getting ready and trying on clothes and asking human questions like: does my butt look big in this? do I look normal? what is normal? I think it’s amazing.
I wore the traditional red tussar silk sari with a very modern black halter neck blouse. I wore my antique gold earrings and choker and my confusion. I sipped on pomegranate cosmopolitans and decided that cultural confusion was lovely because it left the door open to being many different things. I love my cocktail dress, and I wore the sari last night.
My friend has a fashion blog. I know she air quotes it, but that’s because she is as self-deprecating as she is fearless. There’s something important about fashion that she’s articulating, that has nothing to do with deconstructed hemlines (I may have just made that up, but doesn’t it sound like it could be a thing from NYC fashion week?) or coral being the new black. RachL is talking about what she’s wearing in her life as she’s going about living it; a dress for a dinner with policy wonks, “ironic” boots, clothes picked out for running a 5K, cardigans for teaching English lit. But to me, she’s saying something powerful: clothes are a running statement on our identity. I never thought about it before, not really. Of course, I’ve thought about what I should wear to this event or that, but I’ve never understood the deeper reasons why I have misgivings about my choices (other then this does make my butt look big) or why I feel like I’m pretending to be something other than I am. But this was what crystallized in my head yesterday evening as I stood in my wardrobe evaluating my options for a night at the School Auction.
The question was: a sari, or a black cocktail dress?
The sun was coming in through the window opposite the wardrobe and caught the glow of the red silk; six yards, neatly folded into a rectangle and hanging on a prosaic dry-cleaner-issued hanger. There’s an inner fire to tussar, a hand-woven silk from India, that is hard to describe. It makes me want to cry, it’s that lyrical. I remembered falling in love with this sari as my mother and I sat in a sari emporium two summers ago…
Despite the images of a busy, chaotic country, sari shopping in India is a very civilized activity. You are welcomed into the shop with a cup of tea or coffee. You are seated in a comfortable chair in this oasis of calm; your sales person, your guide to this world, asks after your health, your family’s health and makes a polite remark or two about the weather and traffic. Then, you enter a world of absolute sensory delight. Saris are draped on you, on chairs near you and on the guide himself, to show off the exquisite details. Saris from every part of India: the gorgeous silks of the South with the temple borders; the shimmering, beaded work from the North and West, making you remember long-forgotten history lessons of Mughal queens; the pure colors and patterns of the East. For me, coherent thought ceases and I want to dive into the pile. If I crawl in, maybe they won’t notice me and I can just live in this world? Picking one is like being asked to pick a favorite child, but I came home that expedition with the red tussar silk shot with gold.
I looked at it in the afternoon sunlight and I missed home. And here’s where the musings began. True, I am born of Indian parents and was born in India. My parents left India for various parts of the world when I was four and I travelled with them, making sojourns in Tanzania and Papua-New-Guinea before I went back to school in India as an awkward twelve year old. I lived in Hyderabad, India, with my grandparents and then my mother, for the next eight years, until I came here for graduate school. So, I’ve spent more time in the U.S.A than I have anywhere else; I became an adult here, I met and married an American man here, had my three amazing kids here, got divorced here and discovered myself here. So what is home? Why does a sari make me think of home? The home I knew when I left India long ago is, in ways small and large, almost unrecognizable now. The house I walk into now, in this country, with the sunlight and the wardrobe with the sari and the black cocktail dress hanging in it, it is the place I long to be when I’m tired. It’s here. So what is home, to a culturally mixed-up blogger? What is my identity?
The question wasn’t about the sari or the Calvin Klein black cocktail dress. The question was and is something else. It hovers in the background all the time as I live my life; it elbows its way into the foreground as I stand in my closet and look at my clothes. Am I a tall boots and denim jacket girl today, or am I going to choose an Indian tunic? Will I wear my Indian shawl today or my wool scarf from Scotland? I look Indian. Do I look typical in this country? Do people think I’m trying to fit in? Should I fit in? Who the hell am I?
And that, RachL, is when I realize that I do fit in. You ask these questions, coming to them from your cultural background and your American experience. I ask these questions, coming to them from my cultural background, my American experience and my own brand of crazy. I suspect that we all ask ourselves the same kind of questions. Your fashion blog is a group of people getting ready and trying on clothes and asking human questions like: does my butt look big in this? do I look normal? what is normal? I think it’s amazing.
I wore the traditional red tussar silk sari with a very modern black halter neck blouse. I wore my antique gold earrings and choker and my confusion. I sipped on pomegranate cosmopolitans and decided that cultural confusion was lovely because it left the door open to being many different things. I love my cocktail dress, and I wore the sari last night.