Pleats from the fabric of life

At a time when alternate cinema is becoming the rage, it's hardly surprising that the illustrated book (pejoratively dismissed as coffee table book) is reinventing itself under the guise of interchangeability.

This gives it the potent appeal of reverse snobbery, if you will, a style statement of NGO chic that appeals to an intelligentsia dismissive of the glossy packaging of picture books that extol the virtues of the Taj Mahal, or Ravi Varma kitsch, while ignoring a larger reality.

The Sari addresses these concerns with such earnestness that it almost fails. Almost, for at times it becomes pedantic, even preachy, heavily bureaucratic in its reportage.

For all that, it is saved by an approach so informal, so flexible, it breaks every rule of the picture book, to reinvent itself in refreshing guise.

In the idyllic coffee table book realm, the country's national dress would have been idolised, its warps and wefts swooned over, only the best and the picture-perfect would have found representation, the lot of the weavers would have been praised for continuity (while ignoring their shanty-like existence), and the synthetic weave would have been dismissed with an apology and a shudder.

Enter Mukulika Banerjee and Daniel Miller, both teachers of anthropology in London, hardly your usual glossy book hacks. Perhaps that is the reason the book perceives the garment less to extol and more as a measure of relationships and life in India.

To that extent, it is represented as the fabric of India, from the way it is worn to the manner in which it is stored, used, draped, presented, alternated and represented.

This break with tradition is most significantly indicated through visual perception. Instead of the usual high society models and Banarasi weaves that touch only an insignificant creamy layer of society, page after page is devoted to the manner of its everyday existence.

Draped by fisherwomen and vegetable sellers, office-goers and agriculturists, commuters, widows, prospective brides, charity workers and politicians, the writers explore the nuances that gives it wide acceptability and unites it as the lowest common denominator of Indian society.

It tackles issues that range from its wearability as a working dress to sexuality, from its adaptability to its limitations.

Tackled through a range of interviews, it intersperses textual commentary with diary inputs that weave the sari into the life of Mina who finds her discomfort with the sari changing to acceptance, even comfort with the unstructured garment that now rules her life.

Varying perceptions of the sari are represented, not just in its regional variations but in the manner of its tying for functional relevance.

Does it reveal too much? Especially when women are getting into or out of a car, or a bus? Is it safe to wear on a mobike? How many bride-burning murders are blamed on the pallu of the sari catching fire? Is it being replaced by the salwar-kamiz in the office? And how does it evolve in various guises "" as a power sari for a corporate executive, as a symbol of authority for a policewoman or a bureaucrat "" with its variations of texture, colour and style of wearing?

For every woman who uses the sari as a cocoon, for another it may be a shroud, while for yet another it may be just another garment.

Yet, it speaks its own language: the first adult act for young girls is the school graduation party when they dress up, probably for the first time in their lives, in a sari. If it indicates a coming of age, in cinema it is used as a tool to show the taming of a shrewish or rebellious young woman.

While for a new bride, it must simultaneously cloak her body sufficiently to please her in-laws (with whom in all probability she is living) with her modesty, it must at the same time serve to arouse her husband whom she may never have met prior to their marriage.

It is this duality of the sari that intrigues, yet weaves in complexities. The writers journey into the hearts and hearths of different women, they travel to sari shops, eavesdrop on couples buying saris, visit katras and haats where they are sold, investigate the history of weavers, looms, powerlooms and the deconstruction or embellishment of the sari in the hands of designers.

But not for once do they lose sight of its wearer who for most part is likely to be from the marginalised, but mass strata of society.

Clearly too, the book is aimed at a western audience unlikely to be familiar with the garment, and so is fairly simplistic in the way it offers explanations at various points.

Even so, the writers stumble occasionally, as in the abrogation of the term 'chiffon' which they refer to as a volume driven market.

Clearly, they are referring to the synthetic version which is worn in cities by ranks of working women for its convenience, whereas the chiffon sari in actuality is both expensive and limited to a snobbish circuit.

Where they succeed is in exploring the relationships a sari may build with its wearer and those around her, part of the intimate life of Indian society at large, they are less successful in exploring the present and future context in which, though the convenient salwar-kamiz finds due representation as functional wear, it has not succeeded in replacing the sari which is ritualised into all important moments of a woman's life.

Arguments that pitch it with the near-extinct kimono are hardly worth the paper on which they are printed, since there can be no comparison between a structured garment and an unstructured one.

The sari suits the Indian persona because of the many roles it is able to play, the most socialist of garments in a country where democracy may best be represented in its pleats and drape.

THE SARI

Mukulika Banerjee and Daniel Miller

Photographs by Dixie, Berg/Roli

Pages: 279

Price: Rs 1,250