10 Kinds of Saree Wearers

From the time I was quite young, as young as 10 years old, I used to enjoy watching women in sarees. Ya, kind of an early bloomer. I used to categorize the women in some loosely defined categories. Here is what I can recollect.

• The perfect 10s: The saree looks perfect on them, as if the saree-weaver had this woman in mind when he wove the saree. Each fold of the saree enhances their beauty and each thread seems to be happy to hug this women. They also invoke hackneyed poetry like this in onlookers.
• A-la-Egyptians: They follow the Egyptian mummy wrapping method of wearing a saree. They cover each inch of their body with the saree, very efficiently hiding the gap between the waist and the blouse in miraculous layers of the saree. Makes you wonder if they are wearing one saree or two!
• De-pleaters: Do you know the law of conservation of pleats? The number of saree pleats (called kuchchiLLu in Telugu) that originate at the waist must be equal to the number of pleats that end up at the feet. The women in this category are in criminal violation of the law. The pleats that start crisply at their waist lose their way around knees and end up in a lump at their feet.
• Saree-capris wearers: These women's saree does not cover the full length of the leg, leaving a couple of inches of the legs uncovered at the ankles. Inadequate experience, rather than the width of the saree, is the root of the problem. A very bad way to wear a saree, especially if the texture of their legs generally resembles a wool carpet.
• Luck-pushers: These women do wear the saree well, but somehow forget that their garment is held in place by a puny physical law called friction and that excessive tugging at it will render it out of shape. While wearing the saree they venture into tasks fit only for Romanian gymnasts, such as catching a running bus, moving furniture around and so on. As a result, 15 minutes later, the saree starts to look like it may fall off anytime. (But it never does, so no use following them around)
• Sideshow artists: Women unknowingly fall into this category if they forget to make sure that the pallu (the lose end of the saree) is covering the side of their left shoulder. Whenever their hand is not parallel to the body, they provide a profile view of the body parts that are generally carefully tucked under the folds.
• Pincushions: They use excessive number of pins to keep the saree in place and to prevent any accidental revealing of skin. It is a miracle how they manage not to tear the saree every time they move a limb.
• Googlers: The most recently added category. The women in this category trust the Google-Gods to guide them through the unexplored territory of garment origami. Armed with online tutorials, a lot of imagination and blind faith in themselves, they become their own guinea pigs. These attempts could go either way, but alas, we will only come to know of the successful attempts and they all look stunning.
• Wrap-duo: This category is not about the style of wearing a saree but about the act of wearing a saree. Some women are skilled enough at the art of saree wrapping that they can manage on their own. Some take a friend into the dressing room to help them wrap the saree. I don’t have any problem with that except that nobody ever asked me to help
• Navel revealers: A mythical category. Rather, a fleeting category. Some women momentarily fall in this category because of some (fortutious) slip. The the saree gets readjusted faster than you can tell if it is innie or outie. By the way, I refuse to put movie heroines in the category. I should probably invent a new category for them, something like, “This saree must have been super-glued to their bodies to stay in that position.”