Today's Controversy - Misogynists like me!

The big controversy in India nowadays is The Future of the Sari. You thought I was going to say The Future of Cricket, didn’t you? Well, I will have an opinion on that too shortly. :-) Watch this space.

The whole Sari controversy was started by Shashi Tharoor, bless his bleeding liberal heart. Now on his second editorial on the subject (mostly apologizing to “every female in India with a keyboard” who railed on him for celebrating the Sari), he continues to eulogize, and rightly so, how beautiful the sari is and laments how it is going out of style. I have always felt that it was a bad thing that such a wonderful garment like the Sari is being replaced by that abomination, the Salwar Kameez and worse, pants! In fact, I also like skirts and a few other outfits for the same reasons that I like the Sari, but they almost literally pale in comparison.

The sari is the most sensuous, beautiful, adaptable, colorful, sexy (yet chaste when necessary), graceful, lovely, charming, feminine garment ever invented. I could add more adjectives, but you get the idea?

In Architecture, a philosopher once tried to illustrate beauty by comparing it to a Spiral. The essential property of a spiral is that it is both changing and unchanging. In other words, at a general level the shape is not changing, yet the radius is constantly changing, and so the shape is too. If that Greek had ever seen a Sari, he would have chosen it as a better illustration than the spiral. With a flick of a wrist it can change from a seduction to a “hijab”. A little tug and everything is revealed, and yet in a flash it is gone. A single piece of cloth has infinite possibilities! What designer could possibly have conceived of such raiment! Think I am getting poetic? You ain’t seen nothing, buddy!

The controversy? For many women it is a “hassle”, managing that 5-/12 yards of cloth naturally requires skill, patience and obliging dhobis (washer men/women) who will wash it, iron and not rip it. Skill comes into the picture when putting it on and keeping it on. And therein lies the rub. The less women wear it, the more the skill erodes, until finally they reach the threshold where jumping into a pair of pants seems much more attractive to the harried modern woman.

Be that at is it may, I will be careful not to express my opinion of its utility in a woman’s life. But I will celebrate its beauty, and to do so, here is a little poem (with apologies to Shakespeare).

Shall I compare thee to a babbling brook?
Thou art more radiant and more yielding.
Rough stones do foam the stream,
And too plain is its winding.
Shall I compare thee to a flowered garden?
Thou art more colorful and more changing.
The buds have but a single song
Your colors have surpassed rioting
Shall I compare thee to a nun’s habit?
Thou art more chaste and blameless
No color, no sparkle and yet…
…yet more revealing – words fail me!
Oh, a thousand are the ways dost thou delight me!

So if there are enough of us so called misogynists who love the Sari, perhaps its future is assured. One can only hope...