My Red Saree

Red is an auspicious color in Nepal, permeating everyday activities as well as weddings, sacred ceremonies and Hindu festivals. While the color carries a sensual connotation in Western culture, women in Nepal wear it as a sign of purity, dignity and honor. The color is especially meaningful for married women as the red sari and other adornments visibly convey their cherished status.

The first time a Nepalese woman dons red arraignment is for her  wedding. Brides wear red wedding saris embellished with beadwork and gold-thread embroidery. The saris are more than beautiful garments —  they represent the transformation from adolescence to womanhood. This transformation begins with the Mehndi ceremony, a significant  pre-wedding ritual for Hindu brides. During the ceremony, the bride-to-be’s hands, arms and feet are painted with reddish-brown henna ink in intricate patterns.

Red lavishly colors every aspect of the multi-day wedding celebration. For the ceremony, the bride and groom are draped in red fabric to declare their union before family and friends. After kanyadaan, when the father hands over his daughter to her husband, the groom applies vermillion powder, sindoor, to his bride’s head.

As the ceremony begins with red, so must it end. Before stepping into her new home, the bride’s bare feet are dipped in red water to wash away her singlehood and bestow upon her the color signifying her heightened status as wife.

Married women wear red in various forms every day of their lives. Each morning, a wife applies tika (a red dot) to the center of her forehead to convey feminine energy and protection for herself and her husband. She paints the center part of her hair with vermillion sindoor powder as a declaration of her status. Women smear vermillion paste on the  portals of their homes. They also apply it to foreheads of family members as a blessing; they receive the same blessing from priests during daily temple visits. Wives wear red cotton saris while buying vegetables on the streets of the local market, saving their silk or chiffon dresses for more festive occasions.

Every year as a little kid I saw my mother dress up in her prettiest red saree and all the regalia that came with it. She looked exceptionally beautiful around teej, rather she made sure she did. She would then fast for an entire day without even taking a sip of water. It is a game I used to say to myself. A challenge to go without drinking for twenty-four hours. All women in the family used to gather at our grandmother’s place. The night before they would sit together and eat one last time before the teej fast would ritually start. We kids, careless and happy we are all spending the night together on this festival, would scream, play and run around.

As I grew up, the festival of teej gained a new meaning, the night long singing and dancing, the adornments, and the rituals were not just amusements but they had a very specific purpose. Aunts would tease me and the girls that we should start fasting already if we wanted a perfect husband. Shiva would grant one to us. They are too young now, my grandmother would interrupt. Their mother-in-law will make them fast anyway. Let them be untroubled while they are in their mother’s house. I would giggle outwards but feel awkward inside. How would Shiva help me find a good husband? Does he know what would make a perfect husband for me, when I do not know that myself? What if he gets confused and picks someone he likes but I do not?

Years later, as a grown woman living on my own and away from my family for years, teej had become a childhood memory. My mother would some time mention about teej being round the corner on our phone conversations. I would dread her not eating or drinking for an entire day. She would say that if you believe in the fast you do not even feel the need to. It would not convince me but I would rather not argue. 

Since I did not fast to make Shiva happy, the job of finding a perfect husband had to be undertook myself. You see, if I didn’t trust the Lord himself to do it I could not trust anyone else too. Maybe Shiva was pleased already or I was good at looking, but I found the perfect one I wanted to marry. I was a months old bride surrounded by a new family and teej was approaching. The women I would meet would ask me if I had fasted before. I would smile and shake my head, “no”. They would enquire if my mother did and be satisfied with an affirmative answer. “This would be your first one, then”, they would say. Older ones would mention how it was much harder in their time but now the rules are a little relaxed. Collectively they would discuss the long queues at Pashupati and the hours they spent waiting to gain entry the year before, and the year before and so on. Queues, hunger and thirst would scare me a little but I did not want to show it. 

On the day of Teej, I dressed up in my red wedding saree, half excited, half anxious. Are you seriously going to fast all day, my husband kept questioning and went on to tease me about going hungry to ensure his long life and good health. Now I feel guilty about eating and I am hungry he complained. Cousins back home, younger sisters who were next in line to get married within a year – the ones I ran amuck with on this day decades ago as our aunts and mothers did the puja – texted me. Each one of them, asking me how I was holding up without eating or drinking? Is it as difficult as it looked? Do you really not feel like eating like our mothers used to say? 

A part of me was not even listening to the chatter. As I stepped out of our home and went from one temple to another, the atmosphere outside was electric. All the women I saw were dressed up and on their way to temples talking animatedly and laughing. There were mandalis or groups on the corner of roads singing and groups of women were dancing to their tunes. It was a true red party on the streets. The aesthetics of the festival were so arousing that you could not care for anything else much either. I forgot all about the fast as the excitement in the air caught up with me. “I think teej is the only time when there are more women than men on the city streets. Seems oddly subversive in its own way”, I mentioned enthusiastically to my sister. 

As I waited in the thankfully-not-so-long queue at Pashupati, paused a moment to look around. There were so many women in groups walking around in their best clothes, buying little nothings, dancing in the middle of the streets in a manner which was refreshingly lighthearted. It was their day! I realized something then; maybe, this is not about the husbands at all. Yes, it says so in the books and stories but that does not have to be the truth all the time. Times have changed, they say and a woman like me can leave their house whenever I want and go out with my friends without my husband tailing me. But have times really changed for all women? Perhaps these are the occasions when women from all quarters of society can freely get out together and have an amazing time in the name of ritual. It made sense to me to see the excitement on the faces around me. They are not just fasting, they are celebrating. 

My story of saree is not limited, my cupboard is full of red saree and the collection of red saree with beads is my hobby.I just love to buy sarees around the seasons and exchange as gifts too.It has very special effect in my mind as it connects to me as my mom and granny and all my relatives wear same dress during festive seasons and gettogether with redsarees make the day special.