O is for ... Original ... n ... Ordinary

 

All this month I am writing about outstanding Indian handlooms, a quick but captivating dive into the saree specifically, a garment worn by Indians for five millennia. Come with me into the magnificent, complex and utterly fascinating world of fibre and yarn, of skills and techniques of dyeing and printing and embroidery, traditions unchanged for centuries. Of sumptuous finished fabrics that not only make a fashion statement, but also constitute our cultural heritage and political identity.

O is for Old-timers 

Today I want to tell you about my own experience - of wearing sarees myself, of seeing my female ancestors wear them and how the draping style changed over generations in my family. The Bengali 'aatpoure' (aahT-poh-oo-ray meaning all-day all-time, ordinary, constant-use) drape is very different from the Nivi drape in that it is not gathered into pleats, it is wrapped around the lower torso once to the left and once to the right, so that there are three thicknesses around the lower body and the aanchal is wrapped around the upper body twice.  Watch this well known drape artist do an authentic Bengali aatpoure drape in the video below.

 

The oldest person I've seen wearing a saree was my great grandmother, my mother's grandmother. She was likely born in the late 1880s or early 1890s, just a couple of decades after Jnanadanandini Tagore had modernised the ordinary Bengali drape and a time of great social change for Bengali women. But clearly the style had not reached my great grandma. Not everybody was a fan of the fashion forward Bengal Renaissance  style progressiveness. 

 

By the time I met my great grandmother, she was a widow. She wore the stark white borderless unembellished saree that Bengali widows of her generation were expected to wear,  without any undergarments or blouses, draped in the original Bengali aatpoure style. I visited her several times with my mother and her outfit did not differ in a single detail - always white, always borderless, not a spot of colour anywhere on her person. Incidentally, she did not wear any jewellery either and her hair had been cropped close as a marker of widowhood. There were strict food taboos as well, no fish/meat, no eggs, no onions and garlic, a circumscribed vegetarian diet. She lived alone with a helper/companion, also a widow, so I assume the dress, hair and diet were voluntary - she probably felt compelled to follow societal norms of her times, which were particularly unkind to widows. 

My paternal grandmother and great aunt in the sixties.

Both ladies are wearing the aatpoure drape. Note the 

double layer of the aanchal/pallu. The inner layer is used 

to cover the head. Bengali ladies of their time did not 

appear in public with their hair uncovered. 

My grandmothers and great aunts never wore anything else apart from sarees. Neither did my mother, except in old age when she was too infirm to dress herself. My grandmothers wore the aatpoure drape inside their homes and even when they stepped out occasionally. My mother I've never seen wearing the ordinary drape at all, she always wore the Nivi style saree. All ladies wore an undergarment around which the saree was draped and which held the saree in place.  

My great aunt wore a long 'chemise' which combined the blouse and the underskirt into one, an Indian modification of the French chemise a la reine, a style of garment first worn by Marie Antoinette in the 18th century.  Incidentally, the French had established a trading post in Chandannagar about 50-ish kms from Calcutta in the 1670s which remained under French control till 1952. So it's not surprising that French items of apparel found their way into Bengali fashions, especially since the Queen's original garment was made out of Bengal muslin!  Not that my great aunt wore chemises of highly expensive muslin, hers were made in plain cotton fabric. My grandmother on the other hand, wore a separate jama (blouse) and a shaya (petticoat), more in line with the Victorian dress format.

I remember my grandmother in white sarees with red borders (she predeceased my grandfather, so there were no taboos on borders or their colours). My great aunt was a widow for the entire time I knew her so I've seen her always in a narrow, black-bordered white saree, an inchi paaR, or a one-inch bordered saree. Most Bengali women of my grandmother's generation transitioned to white sarees when their children got to adulthood. My mother followed the same convention - as I reached my twenties, she phased out the colours in her wardrobe gradually to white based sarees, at first with small butis (motifs) or thin stripes in colour on a white body, then to a completely white-bodied saree with broad, coloured borders. Like my grandmother, my mother too predeceased my father, so she wore all colours in her borders. 

Red is a marker of marriage in India, an auspicious colour - so a widow of my mother's time wearing red would be frowned upon. Conversely, it is the norm for Bengali married women to wear bright red bordered sarees on religious/festive occasions.  In short, a saree wasn't just an outfit in the last century,  it signalled a woman's marital status and her age to the society at large. 

Incidentally, my mother has been the overriding influence in my saree wardrobe and my obsession with handlooms. She wore handloom sarees exclusively all through her life and did not switch to any other mode of dress even while she lived in Nigeria or travelled around Europe on holidays. As a child, I never saw her wear any factory/mill made, mass produced saree, she was always in handloom cottons, the plainer weaves for everyday wear, the fancier ones kept for going out. And a few silk handlooms for grand occasions. She was  born in pre-independent India, both my parents were, and she started wearing sarees in the 1950s in newly independent India when the call to champion the cause of indigenous artisans was strong and unambiguous, the wearing of Indian handmade textiles a pathway to revive the proud Indian heritage lost to colonialism and one small step towards rebuilding the nation. 

My aunts too, her sisters and sisters-in-law, wore sarees exclusively and Bengal handlooms most of the time. Some of them might have worn mill made ones for convenience occasionally, e.g. in the rainy season, when handlooms are difficult to dry and starch. In short, ladies I saw all around me growing up reinforced the same preferences for Indian handlooms. 

The youngest of my paternal aunts was widowed when she was less than 30. She did not follow the societal taboos imposed on widows about diet, jewellery etc, but she did stop wearing coloured sarees. She wore white and never wore a red bordered one again. The customs of centuries run deep even when we all know that they are unfair. In my own generation, widows no longer give up anything that they don't choose to, thankfully. However, I do believe this is limited to urban, educated Bengali women only. In the villages, prejudices against widows are probably still rampant. 

So, that's the sum of my own experiences observing the sarees I've seen worn around me. The older generations wore the aatpoure drape both in and out of the home, some without blouses and underskirts but most with them. Women in my family born 1920s onwards wore the Nivi drape almost exclusively and never wore the aatpoure style. 

I learnt to wear a saree around 11/12 years of age, once I got to secondary school. I've also worn the Nivi drape almost exclusively, except a  handful of occasions where I wore the seedha-palla (the aanchal on the right shoulder brought from back to front). I know how to do an aatpoure drape but I have never worn that version.  I think I need to try it out once! - now that it's become quite trendy to drape sarees in new styles. The aatpoure drape has made a comeback lately and many of the younger generation are wearing it, especially for festive occasions and weddings.

In a seedha-palla Benarasi. My aunt is behind me in a

Nivi drape Bengal handloom. Also among the ladies

who influenced my wardrobe preferences.

~~~

Did you know that India is not the only country where the saree is worn? Women in other Asian countries wear sarees too - in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. Sinhalese women wear the saree in Sri Lanka where it is called the Osariya style. Read more here. 

Thank you for reading. And happy A-Zing to you if you are participating in the challenge. 

A-Z Challenge 2025