Skip to main content

Nine yards of happiness

Nine yards, the sarees  hanging in my mother's cupboard have become  my new companion. A saree, isn't just yards of threads juxtaposed to form a drape, a saree is possibly an emotion which thrives !
I have grown seeing the pretty ladies of my family adorning sarees of all kinds. But, as a kid I was fascinated by my grandma's sarees, the reason being , she held on to the bright fabrics which resembled an artist's dreamscape. I would pester her to drape me one and she would mockingly pull my cheeks saying first outgrow the nine yards and then you can have all of these sarees for yourself. Ah! Wish you were around 'aama', without you here I don't even feel like looking at your closet which has been clinging to a mothballed past.
I was never a person who could master the art of draping a saree, I would make a fuss over it's unwillingness to neatly stay locked in pleats. But I have believed that the grace a saree holds can't be substituted by any other drape. Maybe, here I carry a bias but so be it, a saree after all has successfully captured an unexplainable charm over the years.
Today, as I stood fumbling over a "not so difficult to manage" kind of simple cotton saree, I realised, it required patience and a lot of love to carry any saree. It required you to embrace it's grace and it was sure to stay back. It's yards weaved stories of it's own. No more could it be limiting, it could possibly add wings if you knew to carry it with an indomitable spirit. I pleated it in neat folds and smiled at the nine yards of happiness. It no more was just an odd yard of cloth, it was who I wished to be today.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Life on wheels

The one thing that I always had dreamt of as a kid was to have a caravan that could take me to places.I always wanted a gypsy styled life. The idea itself mesmerized me to the extent that I kept dreaming of it the whole time not even realising how it was time which kept on rolling but I stood exactly at the same place, my dreams could never concretize. What was laughed at as a childish game was so important to me that I keep doodling it in my memory till now. I see a meadow, lush green with those small daffodils growing by, perhaps Wordsworth's daffodils! Then I see a girl, her wild unkept hair sailing in the gentle breeze. She has a smile which speaks of solitude, and her heart , well that's swelling with happiness as he looks at her caravan, after all she finally has a life on wheels. What more could she wish for, what more  can anyone wish for? It's not always that we get to live a life we conceived as a kid, life keeps on deciding our track. From what we liked doing...

"My love is enough for both of us"

"My love is enough for both of us", she often felt those words ring in her heart. She finally had understood that life wouldn't always follow her designs. That people are meant to leave but their memories won't. She often had wondered how someone could love her to such an extent when that person had always known that she wouldn't reciprocate those feelings. How could a person stand by her when she always acted as a fleeting shadow. She never had given hope for she knew the pain of dejection but he kept hoping like a hopeless vagabond. How she wished that he would some day hate her enough to let go. She devised ways to free him from this web, she acted cold, turned indifferent, did everything he detested and she finally saw some changes. It was a relief, he finally seemed to take hold of his life. She could see him grow responsible. He finally it seemed was learning to love himself. Phone calls died, meetings subsided, they become known strangers. All this while ...

What do you want to be?

While I was in my 10th standard, almost everyone I met wanted to know what I wanted to be. This question always perplexed me. From the lens of a fifteen year kid who was not yet sure of the changes which awaited in the near future, this question gave me nightmares. I would constantly sit by the mirror and ask myself, what actually would be my answer. My friends always had fancy answers at their disposal. They would confidently chirp whenever any one asked about it. What amused me most was, my friend who had no inkling to study Biology wanted to be a doctor and another friend who detested the idea of even cooking noodles, wanted to be a chef! But whenever they spoke about their wishes, they would always sound confident. And there I was, fumbling for words which refused to escape my lips. It was not until I entered Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya to do my plus two, I found my voice. The teachers there have a different way of viewing life. For the first time, I no longer felt the classroom...