We attended the wedding of one of our language helpers a few weeks ago, which gave me the occasion to buy my first saree. In Kerala, sarees are still the norm for formal functions. A friend took me shopping at a place that is 5 floors of everything cloth, one whole floor being devoted to saree material. I was overwhelmed. We looked through yards and yards and yards of material before finally settling on a turquoise one with gold trim. Then we had to pick the material for the underskirt and take it all to be stitched. Being clueless about how to put one on, I asked a friend in our flat to wrap me and she was thrilled. Evidently, wrapping a westerner in a saree is quite a privelege. It was way more complicated than I thought. Thankfully, she pinned it all over so I wouldn't have to redo it at the wedding. Then came the jewelry. No saree is complete without lots of bangles, a necklace, and a bindi (which I opted out of). I have to say, it was really pretty comfortable. The only challenge was figuring out how to handle it while using a squatty potty! Here is a picture of the final product, along with a few of Evie's new dud's she got for her birthday.
