The colours and fabrics of my mother’s old saris are a thread linking me to my Indian ancestors
It’s my first memory. I’m watching my mother put on her sari in her old bedroom in Southall. It’s 1969 and I’m two years old. It’s early evening, all dark browns and blacks in my mind, like a sepia-tinted film. I remember the long white petticoat, tied at her waist with string, her figure defined by a dim light from the hallway. She starts wrapping her body in the lengths of material, quickly tucking the first layer into the petticoat. Part of the sari is still lying in a heap on the floor, before she transforms it magically with her hands into an outfit that fully envelops her.
This is the primal image I carry around with me – of my mother, her body and her sari, imprinted for ever in my consciousness. But my memory always behaves strangely – often I feel as though I’m both part of the scene and an outsider, looking in. It seems to reflect my conflicted feelings towards the sari itself. The sari is an essential part of my maternal heritage yet, at times, I view it with the eyes of an outsider. My emotionally charged relationship with the sari is deeply symbolic of how I feel about myself as a British Bengali woman and how this country feels about us as Indian immigrants.
