Reviewer: Usha Chandrasekaran, (written in 1999)
Book Review: 60-plus Ways to Drape Saris. Usha Chandrasekaran, an Upper St. Clair resident, reviews Chantal Boulanger’s recent book Saris: An Illustrated Guide to the Indian Art of Draping. Email her at devi@devi.net. You can order the book from the author’s website http://www.devi.net
Every time we attend an Indian gathering, my mother gently prods my daughter to wear a sari, saying, “I started wearing sari when I was only twelve.” My daughter would smile and reply, “But Patti! I am afraid. I don’t know how to wear a sari without help!”
Imagine my delight when I got the book Saris: An Illustrated Guide to the Indian Art of Draping by Ms. Chantal Boulanger, a French author! It is a great gift not only to second generation Indians living outside India, but to their mothers and grandmothers as well!!
The book begins with the warning that learning to drape a sari by reading a book is not easy. Boy, was that an understatement! With a crisp introduction to the definition of terms, the techniques, and key words to the basic drapes, the author describes ten styles of wearing dhotis, more than sixty-six different styles of wearing saris and mundus. It is amazing that people could come up with so many creative ways of wrapping themselves so elegantly with a given length of unstitched cloth.
Boulanger has classified the various types of saris in six chapters, highlighting the variation in each type. Each chapter has briefly described the style and the reason for the differences in styles. The author has traveled extensively all over India, researching the various types, and even wearing them herself during her travels.
Once in a temple near Goa, the kaccha sari that she was wearing caused the local women to tease her because the way she wore it revealed a little more than it should. She learnt from them the right way to wear it. She learnt to wear the Kappulu sari from a woman crossing the road in Masulipatnam in Andhra Pradesh.
Along the way, the author has given very interesting titbits of information. Did you know that one can tell the social identity of the person by the way they draped themselves in saris? Or that the same type of sari may be worn in regions thousands of miles apart by people belonging to the same caste? Did you know that in the old days, cholis were worn by men?
Next time you see a Tamil Iyer woman wearing the traditional nine yards sari, note that the left part of her drape evokes a woman, and the right part, a man, giving a mobile illustration of the concept of Ardha-nareeswara!
The author has tried to be specific with elaborate illustrations for each kind of sari, describing the techniques of pleats, the kosuvam, Saris…… (Continued from page 10)
mundi and so on. She has portrayed them authentically, and the drawings are precise. I quizzed my mom, and we realized that she herself did not know that there are so many variations, even in her own neck of the woods.
I had a lot of fun trying to wear saris in the Bengali, Raipuri, the Manipuiri, and the Tondaimandalam styles. The author has even described several tribal saris like the Badaga, the Boro Mekhla and the Thoda.
Some of the saris with several pleats, tucks, and turns were downright difficult to follow, especially to try them from just the drawings. The easiest, of course, is the Nivi style, the way we wear the modern sari today, that originated in the Andhra region. I felt that addition of photographs might have been more helpful.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is a must for all Indian homes – especially the ones outside India – for our daughters to understand and appreciate the dying art of draping saris. With many traditional styles of wearing saris disappearing, this book not only glorifies the past but also preserves the art of creatively draping saris for future generations.
Watch out readers! Next time you see a woman draped in a unique style of sari in an Indian gathering in Pittsburgh, it might just be me. END