Do you ever worry about
your clothes falling off?
I did!
I didn’t know what
to wear to a wedding in a small village. I wore a tight silk dress one time and almost passed
out from heat stroke, as there was no AC in the small village house. There was
one fan, though, and the mother of the bride let me lie down on her bed with
the fan directed right on me. I did feel sorry for the others in the front room
where the wedding was being held, but not enough to avoid the imminent faint.
Going to another
wedding at the same house, I didn’t know what to wear besides shorts and a
T-shirt to keep cool. That being inappropriate, I asked my fashion-designer
friend, Mano Caderamapulle, for her advice. She suggested I wear a sari. I
laughed! She said, ‘I’m serious, it’s the perfect thing for a foreigner to wear
to a wedding.’
I’ve always thought
that unless a foreigner was stick thin, a sari would make them (me!) look like
a cow!
Mano insured that
my fleshy parts would be covered with the under blouse. I just had to find one.
After looking all over Colombo to find something I liked, I decided on wearing
my favorite wife-beater T-shirt – it even matched. And hid all that needed to
be hidden.
Wedding Day came,
and I went to Mano’s for her dresser to dress me. Mano had kindly offered one of her
gazillion saris for me to wear. The problem was, the sari fit her and she’s half
the size of me. Now a sari is long piece of material, six to nine yards in
length, elegantly wrapped around the body. Mano’s sari must have been six yards
as it did the one-size-fits-all – it made it around my body - but there was
nothing left to drape over my left arm in typical fashion.
Her dresser wrapped
and rewrapped but there was no way I was getting a drape. So she pinned and
pinned and pinned safety pins everywhere needed and I was finished. Ready to
party! Well, ready for the wedding. There would be no partying in my getup!
With each step I
took, I feared the worst – that the whole wrap would fall down and I’d be
standing there in my knickers and wife-beater T-shirt! I took tiny steps the
whole day long, careful not to step on the yards of gorgeous silk.
Instead of making
me look like a cow, the sari actually made me feel slimmer. I loved it! And all
these years I’ve been avoiding wearing one. I'd even given away a gorgeous one
that I had gotten in India. Sigh.
Compliments abound.
The bride’s family was ecstatic that I wore a traditional sari. They felt honored. Many people
bobbed their heads and pointing to me said,’Lasanai,’
(beautiful). I felt like a star. A Bollywood star!
I finished the day completely intact and just had to find and figure out how to undo all those safety pins. I
laughed, thinking just how frustrated brides must feel on their wedding night,
with their grooms impatiently waiting for them, to find and undo the multitude of safety pins that
held them together!
Madam Lucy in her well-pinned sari!
(See the short drape behind my left arm?)
Check out my
photography website at: http://www.shadetreeSL.com
© ShadeTree
Productions
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