Dressing for a wedding

I have friends with large families who are perpetually attending weddings. They have several siblings and cousins who are in the process of getting engaged and married, and they are enthusiastic participants in all the ceremonies and rituals. Therefore, they have a constantly updated wedding wardrobe at their ready disposal.

I, on the other hand, have attended only three family weddings in the last decade. The go-to dress for women in a south Indian wedding is the saree. It’s undoubtedly a graceful dress and I’m aware that women have run marathons, performed gymnastics and possibly floated to space in a saree. My Instagram feed suggests that the saree is the most versatile dress ever — not only does it always fit you no matter how many kilos you put on, you can also drape it to look modest or sexy as the occasion might demand.

But the problem is that I’m yet to figure out how to drape a saree or be comfortable in it once someone has draped it for me. The pallu makes me feel like some kind of extravagant bird species and I’m forever worried that I’m going to trip on the pleats and fall flat on my face even if the saree has been pinned at several danger zones. Even if someone were to sew the saree directly to my skin, I would still be worried that it would fall off if I moved too much.

Thus, when I wear a saree, I behave like a person with multiple fractures. Like those minor villains you see in the movies who find themselves in the hospital after challenging the hero. I cannot bring myself to move like a normal human being when I’m in a saree. I fiddle with the pleats; I adjust the pallu drape; I check if all the pins are still there; I move like a robot with a piles problem. I cannot hold anything when I’m wearing a saree — not even a handbag.

Women who drape the saree so effortlessly and casually are a mystery to me. They just allow the darned pallu to fall on their bodies and let it stay there. And it stays. How they perform this sorcery, I do not know. They may have one arm slightly stretched to keep it there but they don’t look sore doing it. I simply cannot hold my arm in such a position for that long. Not only would it hurt, I’m pretty sure that I would forget at some point that I was meant to hold it like that and the drape would turn into a bedsheet on me.

Whenever I see women doing things in a saree — from housework to vibrating on massage chairs in the middle of the mall — I’m in awe. How are they managing this, I wonder.

The problem with the saree is that there’s too much fabric for a short person. The solution for this is that you take more pleats but then you have to stuff these pleats into your stomach, giving you a slightly pregnant look. So, all things considered, I avoid wearing a saree as much as possible.

That leaves the other ubiquitous ‘traditional’ dress for such occasions — the salwar kameez. But it cannot be any old salwar kameez that you wear for a wedding. It has to look sufficiently grand to qualify. I hesitate to blow up thousands on expensive salwar kameez suits because I know I will hardly ever wear them. It’s the same with the saree, but then, with the saree, the issue is that I can’t wear them. The salwar kameez, on the other hand, is a dress that I can easily wear but if it is too ornate (especially if it has those annoying tassels), I will never choose it when I’m getting ready to go somewhere. The idea of spending a lot of money on a kind of dress I can wear but won’t end up wearing because it’s too flashy — I find that difficult to stomach.

Considering I work from home, I’m usually lounging around in a comfortable oversized T-shirt and loose pants or skirts. I go to the theatre to review films every week, but I probably will look like an idiot if I wear a weddingy salwar kameez to sit in the darkness for three hours. I cannot imagine wearing such clothes on a family outing to the mall or on holiday either. So, the fate of such a salwar kameez in my wardrobe is likely to be severe neglect coupled with the smell of mothballs. And by the time the next occasion rolls by in another decade, there’s a good chance that I won’t fit into it either.

I cannot do lehenga-cholis. They just look flimsier and shinier than a saree and I cannot, for the life of me, walk around in one. Besides, the readymade lehengas are all too long for me.

For the last wedding I went, I bought a dress made out of saree material from the internet. ‘Traditional with a twist’ was the caption I gave myself in the Page 3 news report about my appearance that I had in my imagination. The young people liked it while the old people thought I was wearing a kurta without the bottom, and were wondering why I was being so scandalous. But at least, this is an item of clothing I can see myself wearing again — without requiring help from someone else to put it on.

There’s a wedding coming up in my husband’s family next month, and since these mostly unknown people are less likely to be understanding of a bottomless-kurta appearance, I decided to play it safe and bought a ‘readymade saree’. I cleverly got a Kerala kasavu saree since you can’t go wrong with that (all the discussions on what silk you’re wearing and of what quality it is make my head spin otherwise). You wear the saree like a wrap-around skirt and then drape the pallu on top. I still haven’t figured out how to do this properly but it isn’t as hopeless a situation as having to drape the damn thing from scratch (yes, I’ve watched YouTube tutorials — I’m still clueless). I hope to be less worried about walking around in it. Who knows, if I get it right, I might be comfortable enough to run a marathon in it…and arrive first at the pandhi.