Little girls love saris
With her mother away at office and school closed on vacation, the young girl decides to dress up. She takes out her mother’s sari and somehow manages to wrap it around herself. She looks in the mirror and says, “Hello madam and how are you?” She has fun emulating her mother.
This is how many young girls generally wear a sari on their own for the first time. It's fun feeling all grown up.
The young character of Ratan in ‘Postmaster’ or Mrinmoyi in ‘Samapti’ by Rabindranath Tagore wore their saris in simple rural style. Though dressed in saris, they would romp around and get up to all sorts of mischief as befitting of their age.
In Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali we also see Durga always in a sari. The famous Bibhutibhushan character runs through the reeds towards the railway tracks, has a tussle with Apu, is drenched in the rain and gets fever.
Sari is no longer an everyday outfit for girls. Nowadays they wear sari only on special occasions. They wear saris at festivals, cultural programmes, bridal showers, Baishakhi programmes at school or just for fun.
Young girls don't bother too much about mastering the art of wearing saris as they can just pop into a beauty parlour and get it done. Even so, there are girls who are quite expert and wearing their saris, handling the pleats adriotly.
Saris may not be worn regularly nowadays, given changing lifestyles, but it is our national dress, we can at least learn how to wear it well.
A Japanse girl who was an intern at Prothom Alo, used to wear all sorts of outfits- shirts, tops, shalwar-kameez, and so on. Once in a festival she came in a sari. She was looking beautiful with other Bangladeshi women in similar costume. She was just like a Bangladeshi girl holding the pleats with one hand while walking. I asked whether she wore kimono, Japan’s traditional garment during local festivals.
She promptly said, “No, no, no! Kimono is so complicated. I haven’t learnt to wear it yet as I cannot walk in it.”
A Japanese woman fears to wear a kimono! The situation is not that bad here!
On Pahela Baishakh, the Bangla New Year, saris are a craze for young girls. It's the same on Pahela Falgun, the first day of spring. Mothers, sisters or the parlours help them out. Designers also introduce saris with young people in mind. Friends, or mothers and daughters, often wear matching saris on these occasions.
And there are the endless selfies! Colours galore!
Sari is typically romantic too, in Bangla culture. Tagore says,
“In the winter afternoon
On whose rooftop far away
A little girl hangs a purple sari
To dry in the sun...”
Once upon a time, girls used to wear their mothers’ saris. Nowadays they get their own saris on special occasions. It's a sign of growing up. When a young girl first wears her sari, she is hesitant and shy, blushing at the slightest praise. But how soon they grow up!
Everyone wants to be grown up when young, but once they grow up, they yearn for their lost childhood. That is life.