ேநாரா ஸ்வீனி

The first time I wore a sari, I was in the middle of my Shansi fellowship orientation in Oberlin, Ohio.  There was a group of Lady Doak College students doing a project with students at Oberlin.  They did some sort of cultural show, which included yoga, dancing to Tamil pop music, and a demonstration of how to tie a sari.  I volunteered to have the sari tied on me, figuring that I might need to wear one some day.  It was a mildly embarrassing experience – everyone in the room stared at me while Priya Rajendran (an LDC professor) tucked the sari into the waistband of my jeans and wound it around me, muttering, “Of course you usually tuck it into a skirt, but this will do.”  So there I was, in front of an audience, standing awkwardly in a t-shirt and jeans with a sari on top.  I tried to take a couple of steps and almost stumbled onto the floor.  I managed to slowly amble to the other side of the room where all of the Tamil girls were sitting, chattering away and smiling at me.  On of them announced: “Nora, you are looking like Indira Gandhi with your short hair and your sari.”  I think I wore the sari for a total of ten minutes and then decided it was time to break free.  

Once I moved to India, I began to wear chudidas, which are knee-length tunics with baggy pants and a scarf. Wearing a chudida is basically like wearing nice pajamas.  It is a very comfortable garment – the pants even have a drawstring.  Chudidas are the typical traditional dress for young, unmarried women.  Women usually only wear saris if they are married or on special occasions.  So, I didn’t really think about wearing a sari for a while, until I started getting invited to weddings.   Suddenly I was getting invitations like this: “Nora, please come to my wedding – but you MUST wear a sari.”  I felt like I had to honor such a request.  I asked my friend Kassia, who has a lot more fashion sense than me, to go sari shopping with me.

On the day of the wedding, I returned from to Madurai from Mysore early in the morning.  It was a Sunday, so no one was around to help me to tie my sari.  My friend Divya promised to help me put my sari on at the wedding hall.  So, I walked into the bride’s dressing room with my chudida on, carrying my sari in a plastic bag.  Of course the first thing Shirin (the bride) said when she saw me was not “Hi Nora, how are you?” but “Hi Nora, where is your sari?  I asked you to wear a sari.”  I wondered how this could possibly impact Shirin’s wedding day when she must have had a lot of other things on her mind.  For some reason, if was important to her that I wear a sari.  So I proceeded to undress in this room full of Tamil girls.  First I attempted to put the blouse on backwards by accident, and then when I got in on, I realized it was much to tight at the base.  Indian corset, anyone?  I hadn’t had time to make sure that it fit right before the wedding because I had been out of town.  Once I had my blouse and my skirt on, I stood in the middle of the room and everyone watched while Divya tied the sari on me.  I am often a spectacle in India but not usually on this intimate of a scale.  The sari tying wasn’t going smoothly either.  Divya kept tugging at the drawstring of the skirt and tying a knot but it wasn’t ever tight enough.  Frustrated, Divya exclaimed, “It is because your hips are too narrow, that is why the string won’t get tight enough.”  Hmm…how did I go from fulfilling someone’s request to getting my femininity assaulted?  Without intending to be mean or critical, Indian women are pretty blunt when they comment on people’s appearances.  One time, Divya saw an picture of me from when I was in college.  I looked slightly boyish - my hair was shorter and I was wearing a t-shirt.  Divya looked at me, looked at the picture, paused, and then looked back at me and said, “You are more beautiful now that you are in India.”  I guess it was a compliment.  I think she meant that I look more like a girl now, which is true.  I usually think this sort of remark is pretty entertaining, but after the narrow hips comment, I was cringing.  Another student friend of mine, Priya, pitched in to help Divya tie the knot, explaining to me,”If we don’t get this tight enough, sari will fall off.”  This whole thing was beginning to seem like a bad idea to me.  Divya kept saying, “Why did you get a cotton sari, they are so hard to tie.”  Finally, after lots of sighs and grumbling and pinning, Divya tied my sari.  Everyone in the room marveled at me, the foreigner in the sari.  Soon after the initial positive response, Divya said, “Don’t you have a gold chain?”  I said no, and sensed a momentary vibe of disappointment around the room.  Apparently matching bangles and earrings weren’t enough.  I was bare without a chain.  Feeling pretty annoyed at this point, I muttered something about how they should all be happy I agreed to wear a sari at all.  Meanwhile, I felt as if I was taking attention away from the bride, who was almost ready in the adjoining room.  One of the other girls glanced my way and noticed that that the left side of my blouse wasn’t quite covered up with the sari, and said, “You have to be careful with this part, don’t let it slide over.”  It’s acceptable for the back of your midriff to show, but showing the front of your blouse is a little too much like exposing your breasts.  This is why girls conventionally when scarves draped over their chests when they are wearing chudidas.  Somehow the extra layer makes a difference.  Anyway, some more pins alleviated the problem of possible exposure.  


Everyone began to leave the room to watch the wedding ceremony.  Time to walk in the sari, I thought.  One of the girls sensed my reluctance to walk and gathered up the front pleats of my sari, handed them to me, and said, “Okay, go.”  I sat down as soon as I could.  Every time I had to get up and move around, I felt like the whole thing was going to fall off.  My sari was thoroughly pinned, but I’m pretty sure it become looser the longer I wore it.  I didn’t even have anyone take a picture of me because I felt so uncomfortable.  I was, of course, coaxed into getting my picture taken with the bride and all of her friends on the stage. When girls asked me what I thought of wearing a sari, I told them flat out that I thought it was really uncomfortable.  I felt exposed, confined, immobile, and just plain awkward.  The ironic thing was, most of the girls I talked to felt just as awkward in saris.  So why were they getting such a big kick out of me wearing one?  I’m still not sure of the answer, but seeing western women wear saris in something of an obsession, especially among Tamil women.  All I knew was, this was not something I would be doing often.  However, I am glad that I did it, because it gave me a lot of insight into how this garment impacts the level of freedom women have in Indian society.  Wearing a sari limits your mobility – you have to move slowly and carefully.  On the other hand, I see women who wear saris everyday and seem totally at ease. I’ve adjusted to a lot of things in India, but I’m still not interested in getting used to wearing a sari.  

During Shirin’s wedding, I imagined having to wear my sari again at Divya’s wedding.  I was planning to film Divya’s wedding.  Suddenly I had a nightmarish vision of me in a sari, saddled with all of my video equipment, tripping over my tripod and breaking my video camera.  Sari + video camera = disaster.  As soon as I got home, I quickly unhinged myself and changed into a t-shirt and jeans.  The next day, I talked to Divya and explained to her that I couldn’t possibly operate my video camera in a sari and that I would be happy to buy a new chudida to wear at her wedding.  I breathed a sigh of relief when Divya said, “Nora, my only wish is that you come to my marriage.”