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  A sari state of affairs on Facebook

A sari state of affairs on Facebook

Published : Sep 15, 2016, 2:39 am IST
Updated : Sep 15, 2016, 2:39 am IST

I hate trend spotting.

I hate trend spotting. To me it often seems like hoodwinking people and pointing to birds hidden in the trees that none, except you as the trend spotter, can see and by unsaid inference those who can’t, being declared “unarrived”. But this one trend spotting that I can indulge in with complete honesty and conviction and to provable evidence is the one that promises to sweep India in a big way in the coming years — the trend of women wearing sarees on a day-to-day basis rather than only for ceremonial occasions. In the mid-90s, I had rather regrettably declared in an article in the Times of India that the saree is poised to go the kimono way.

I hate to say that I was proved right when women in the last two decades opted for what they termed a more comfortable way of dressing — read western outfits as opposed to the saree. Then, in the last couple of years, there has been a decided shift in the perception of the saree as a comfortable and viable option.

The success of two pages on Facebook that I have been following closely over the last one year is an indication that its outreach is touching lives of Indian women within the country and a vast majority of the Indian diaspora, who often go through angst about their cultural positioning and “Indianness”. While the diaspora may not be able to sport it as often as they might want to for various reasons, it is increasingly being seen as a symbol of their cultural confidence. Closer home, there is a visible paradigm shift towards the saree as the ultimate power dressing as the higher women go up the corporate ladder, the more likely they are to sport sarees as opposed to westerns.

These two pages — Magic of Sarees and Six yards 365 days — go far beyond merely wearing sarees and posting pictures. Both work with the premise that every saree has a story and that story is intrinsically entwined with the women sporting it. Of course, there is an academic interest in the weaving techniques and embroideries, but it is the story of the woman in the saree that I find fascinating.

The brains behind Magic of Sarees are two sisters — Suneeta and Susmita Misra — who have a conviction in the saree as a symbol of the Indian woman. As of today, the page has nearly 1,30,000 members and counting. They have managed to keep the interest of the closed group by changing the theme every month and restricting the number of posts to four per month per member. “The constant vigil is against any commercial interests creeping into the group and weeding out posts that masquerade as posts.

The themes vary every month from sarees from a specific style, weave, fabric, region, colour, or season. We even had a Bollywood theme! The idea is to involve as many women as possible to post their stories and we have worked out a system in place where members are supposed to post in the specific albums for easy reference,” says Susmita. The group is putting in place regional chapters to encourage the members to meet outside the virtual world ass well.

The fact is that managing a group that size is not easy and is fraught with its own set of problems, especially as they both work in two time zones as Suneeta lives in the US and Susmita in New Delhi in busy and completely unrelated careers. Their approach is not to take centre stage themselves but encourage other women to post their stories. “All the effort is worth it when one sees women from different social or educational backgrounds or mofussil towns post their pictures. Some of the stories are so heart-wrenching and poignant that it brings tears and we can only say kudos to their courage in posting it on a public platform,” says Suneeta.

Six yards and 365 days, with a little over 3,000 members, is a group managed by Sunita Buddhiraja, a writer and poet who posts her photographs from her eclectic and vast collection of sarees with some very interesting write-ups about each saree.

“The idea is to promote saree wearing on a daily basis and give some positive strokes to women whose life may not go beyond the main door of their homes. So many of them dress up only to post (pictures of) their sarees and when they get a positive response, it is a huge feel good factor. It is very heartening when they express themselves in both word and image,” she says. The group has now a governing body to help charter its future course to explore possibilities to help weavers in a more direct manner. Sunita feels that the best way to encourage and support the millions of weavers and other artisans is to just wear sarees. “If there is a demand, the supply will happen,” she says.

The fact is that things are changing — just like the designers’ taking to the Banaras textiles in a big way has brought the amazing dexterity of the artisans from the region to the fore, the fact that designers are actually making the effort to design woven textiles will definitely take it further. And after a hiatus of several years, actresses are wearing sarees both on screen and off screen. This too sends out positive signals to other women.

Of course, personally, it is my fervent desire and wish to see the resurgence of trend of the 70s and 80s where the thinking-women brigade took pride in the Indian handlooms and celebrated it on a day-to-day basis. It was fuelled in no uncertain way by parallel cinema, with the likes of Shabana Azmi, Smita Patil and Deepti Naval sporting handlooms on celluloid and off it, sparking off trends that are still visible in women who grew up in that era and were influenced by it. These are women who sustained it and grew with it and helped it grow. Many like Laila Tayebji and Jaya Jaitley took it forward to work within the NGO sectors and have now spend lifetimes with artisans — working on designs and finding markets for them.

About time I think too. I was getting rather fed up of being the singular minority of one in many situations out of the art purview where even women of a “certain age” were squeezing themselves in clothes that should be worn by their granddaughters after starving themselves silly. Now you may call it a case of sour grapes, but of that another time! I still chuckle about a piece written by fellow journalist and author Sonal Kalra about these cake-like structures called gowns and the mindset of women who sport them, the unsuitability of the garment to Indian bodies and looks notwithstanding!

Dr Alka Raghuvanshi is an art writer, curator and artist and can be contacted on alkaraghuvanshi@yahoo.com