“I must quickly get to the end”, she had said to herself, conceding immediately to the fact that the piece of writing she was about to embark upon, to which no literary rank could be attributed, called for a ‘fast track’ service to the point, not only to justify itself, but also provide context and motive for having employed a ‘selfie’ as chaperone, which in spite of its precise and modest intentions, made her feel both painfully guilty and deeply ashamed …
… At the somewhat precarious age of 50, akin to no man’s land with respect to the decidedly discomfiting transformation of identity that is dictated by the first prominent markers of the ageing process, she had enjoyed and been shaped by an era in which any and all types of exhibitionism or public displays of vanity were openly frowned upon, and even while she had resigned herself, and was perhaps also partly in awe of the prevailing ‘Impact Culture’ of the 21st century with its single minded pursuit of, and commitment to surface and sensation, frequently at the cost of substance and style, the gradual disfigurement of the human species that suddenly prided itself on deeming oppressive and thereby dismantling conventional codes of etiquette, was next to impossible for someone like her to comfortably assimilate …
… Subtlety, restraint, elegance and grace, all of which she had spent her entire life cultivating, were slowly and steadily becoming extinct, thereby adding further challenges to her continuous efforts to forge friendly relations between two distinctly separate aspects of her identity, the Indian by virtue of ethnic origin and Western by way of both upbringing and acquired DNA, each one awkward in the others company and invariably maladroit in the course of nearly every attempt to try and cooperate, other than when she donned a sari, for it felt so perfectly fitting of her age, ethnic origin, intrinsic femininity, and strangely enough, even European mannerism and style, which no type of dress or, god forbid, frock, could ever – on an Indian woman – accomplish …
… But – for there is always a but – she did not find herself fully represented in either the classic and sometimes conservative styles of wearing a sari or the more risqué contemporary ones, her tomboyish and expressive personality and gestures somehow restricted by the former, for fear of undermining fluidity and decorum, whilst her preference for reserve and carefully veiled timidity felt jeopardized by the latter, and thus she chanced upon a happy compromise, a manifestation of ‘unity in diversity’ that neither converted nor deformed…
… a three-quarter length sleeve, stiff collar and wide cuff cropped linen shirt around which she wrapped a checked sari, the overhang rolled and tucked in the style of a belt around the waist, embellished with a traditional Indian neck piece and pair of Cartier earrings, and all of a sudden, she felt as if she had finally found herself …
… Indeed, the Sari is a many splendored thing.