How to Empty Your Wallet in India

My travel diary, Part 3, in which I shop

Some years ago I wrote a story about a supermarket in Jackson Heights, a neighborhood in Queens, NY, that had a proliferation of stores that sold saris. The dazzle of the fabrics enchanted me every time I passed the stores on my way to the supermarket: I loved the glint of silver and gold thread, the saturated colors. One day, I finally mustered the nerve to go into one of the stores, and got a full tutorial on saris from the salespeople. I had had no idea saris are just yards of fabric that one drapes artfully around oneself. What genius! The salespeople seemed to get a huge kick out of putting me in the underpinnings—a snug-fitting blouse—and then wrapping me up in the sari, like I was a Cabbage Patch doll. The result was quite stunning: The yardage, draped according to tradition, forms a beautiful, elegant dress, as flattering as haute couture.

Photo by Harsh Gupta on Unsplash

I ended up buying a few saris that day, and the amused salespeople gave me a Xeroxed printout to remind me how to put them on properly—there’s quite a bit of complicated folding and draping and gathering involved, and no one uses cheats like safety pins or Velcro.

But I chickened out of ever wearing them, worried that out of the context of the Indian neighborhood I would look like a dope pretending to be Indian. I loved the sari fabric so much, though, that I cut it in half and made it into two gorgeous shawls. Anyone who knew anything about Indian fabric would probably recognize the shawls as half a sari, but I felt fine wearing them and not as if I were cosplaying Indira Gandhi.