THE UBIQUITOUS SARI

In India the colors, the sounds and the smells explode with an astonishing vibrancy. In the streets and bazaars crowded with people the eye is attracted by the colorful costumes worn mostly by girls and ladies since most men wear today dull western dresses. It’s an ocean of reds, greens and bright yellows punctuated with deep blues and blacks. Today, in the cities, Indian girls prefer to wear, for practical reasons, the shalwar-kamiz, a long smock worn over baggy pants rather than the sari preferred by peasant women and urbanites for evening parties and important social occasions. Peasant women can use its folds as pouches or haversacks to carry money, grocery. Millions of Indian ladies continue to cherish this graceful garment, symbol of Indian womanhood, available in multiple forms, colors and materials. Whether it is a coarse hand-woven cotton sari, cheap and practical, or sumptuous brocades the sari has caught, throughout the ages, the imagination of Western travelers. In 1850 Mrs. Sherwood described the sari in these terms : “it consists of one simple web of cloth , so curiously arranged as to form , without the use of needle, thread or scissors, a petticoat, mantle and veil.”

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