saree homestay

tea stall
Originally uploaded by helen beeson

The streets of Old City Hyderabad are packed with women in full burqas shopping up a storm. Sarees with elaborate designs of sequins and fake gems (that look tacky and like they are mass produced by machine but are actually hand-sewn by men on the second story of the market) line the streets of Hyderabad along with gold and fake diamond bangles and sparkly high heels. We decided to take part in the madness and asked a few people where we could get used sarees. We were lead through a long winding series of alleyways into an entirely different marketplace and shuffled into a shop. An oldish man promptly had us sit down on the floor cushions and began to unfold and throw saree after saree (which are 6 meters of fabric) across the small room (and our laps), all the while dribbling betel-nut juice out of his mouth full of red-brown teeth. After a long overwhelming time, we made it out of the store with two sarees, one bright pink with green embroidery (mine) and one blue with christmas tinsel flowers (lauren's). Then we had to get the necessary accessories: petticoats and cholis (blouses). Petticoats! Petticoats were easy to come by but it took us a little while to find the readymade choli store. The man at the store laughed hysterically at lauren's color choice (yellow), almost refusing and saying adamantly that it didn't match and looked terrible. Not knowing our sizes we were shuffled up the small staircase into a lovely little home, complete with a blind grandmother smothering herself with coconut oil and five or six other women sitting around, sewing and chatting. We tried on the cholis, the women made some minor adjustments and then we made it clear to the two sisters that we had no idea how to put on our sarees. They scolded us for not having perfectly matching petticoats (with hardly any english) and wrapped our sarees, spinning us around and tucking and pinning all over the place. We tucked our other clothes in our bags and walked out to the room full of aunties who smiled and laughed at seeing white girls in sarees. In the morning we put them on ourselves and proudly walked out of our room only to encounter the cleaning lady whose hands flew to her face in horror and amusement. "Is okay?" we asked, nonono she shook her head laughing. She refolded and repinned us both, and afterwards our sarees looked almost indiscernably different to us. It turned out we did not fit in more in sarees, much much less actually, and it felt a lot like walking around in Oakland in a prom dress. I had also been harboring the illusion that being draped in 6 meters of fabric would be comfortable, and now I'm even more impressed that women wear sarees everywhere - they sleep on trains in them, they clean in them, they do construction in them, they carry ten trees on their heads in them, etc, etc. It was an amazing way to interact with regular women who otherwise wouldn't approach us on the street: our sarees were adjusted throughout the day be various women who volunteered to help, holding pins in their mouth and worrying about strangers seeing anything. It was like adopting short-term mothers all over the city! Wonderful.