Wearing the saree

Someday I will want to remember the day when I finally get to wear a saree. It has always been a mystery to me how women get themselves twirled around a beautiful colourful piece of fabric.

We have a very tight deadline and we need to come up with some Deepavali theme by this week. We do not have time to organise a more elaborate photoshoot like the one we did for Hari Raya. So, I suggested to my colleagues that we wear sarees as we comprise of several races in our department. They are all very sporting and my Tamil colleague generously brought all her nice sarees for us to choose the colour.

Finally, the mystery has been revealed to me.

First, I have to find a blouse. I wore my regular t-shirt.

Next, I have to wear an inner skirt. I asked my colleague, “You so thin, I am twice your size, how to fit in?” But I can because the cotton inner skirt is free size.

Then, she wrapped me by tucking in the saree cloth into my inner skirt top.

She asked me to turn a bit but I went almost 360 deg.

It actually looks quite easy tying the saree.

But the wearing part is altogether a challenge.

Both my Malay and Chinese colleague and I came out walking like one of those tin robots. Some like penguin.

I was telling myself that I need to tie both my feet with a short rope so that I don’t make big strides as each time I walk, I can hear the saree materials went slish slosh slish slosh. It is amazing how my Tamil colleague can walk so gracefully in her saree. She takes Rapid Bus even.

Given to me, I think I will trip over the cloth. Or accidentally stepped on the cloth and drop the whole thing.

I couldn’t walk or sit normally, one has to be real slow and graceful or else the pleats feel like they are falling apart.

The other thing I learned is – Must not look sexy. I told my colleagues, “It means the nasi lemaks must be hidden behind the saree.”

Seriously, I don’t know how I could go to the toilet with that amount of cloth.

I don’t even know how to fold the saree cloth back because it is six metres long and my hands aren’t long enough to fold it.

So, yeah, I have finally wore a saree. I didn’t put my colleagues photos here as I prefer to keep them out of my personal blog. But you can see the lovely girls on my Facebook album.

The saree is indeed a beautiful piece of art. Now I hope I am not tempted to keep buying saree as I am doing with baju kurung. The regular ones do not cost much. All you need is to buy them, get the tailor to stitch the blouse and you can even get the saree sewn so that you do not need to twirl and pleat them. I have one tailored today. Maybe by Deepavali I will mastered the art of walking and going to the toilet wearing a saree.