SABARI GANESH

How does it feel when the entire world surrounded by us is entirely dark with random voices confusing an innocent mind?

Last week, I was visiting my cousin’s place to meet the newborn baby. I was feeling tired by the time I reached there, and straight away landed on the bed to sleep. Adjacent to me was the baby sleeping peacefully, not worrying about any of the happenings in this chaotic, beautiful world around him. What intrigued me a lot was the old cotton saree of his grandmother which was hung from the top and tied so that it forms a stiff cradle or swing for him to sleep in it, also generally referred as a baby hammock.

Indian saree isn’t just a piece of cloth of six yards; a life of eternity is woven in its tangled threads. It is incredibly hypothetical to understand the obsession of ladies of yesterday’s generation for sarees. They preserve their sarees like a forbidden treasure. But, when it comes to any of the shirts belonging to me or my father, it is forced to retire voluntarily and thrown into the kitchen to spend its retirement life. A kid gets scolded very severely by mom if the school uniform gets dirty, but the same white dress is made dirty by the same mom in the kitchen; Unsurmountable hypocrisy by the queens of the Indian homes. It’s a difficult thing to understand Indian moms.

Pondering over the superiority and partiality the saree derives and demands, among other attires from Indians, that was the moment where the two toddlers of my cousins, opened the Pandora box of sarees. If we need a long piece of cloth to make the baby sleep peacefully, why is it always the saree which is preferred to make a hammock, but not a dhoti or lungi?

A baby would have spent months in the mother’s womb. Naturally, it must be the warmth of the saree of his mom or grandmom, which makes the baby more comfortable rather than the dirty dhoti/lungi, which we men drag across the streets.

Image taken from humanheed.com