Planning the day’s look has seldom been more exciting. Picking the right sari for the day, the right blouse to go with it, and the jhumkas, bangles and bindi... Indian women across the country have caught the sari bug from #100sareepact, which has gone viral. 

The idea is to try and wear 100 saris in a year and upload pictures on social media, so that people can keep tabs on each other and stay motivated. It all started in Bangalore, but moved fast beyond the Garden City. And like many great things in life, this too started when a couple of friends got talking. 

“My grandmother had beautiful saris. She’d run her incense factory in Kanjeevaram saris, we’re a typical South Indian family that way,” laughs Bangalore-based perfumer and entrepreneur Ahalya ‘Ally’ Matthan, who floated #100sareepact with friend Anju Maudgal Kadam. 

“After she had Alzheimer’s, saris went out of her life. But in a lucid moment, she divided her saris amongst her grandchildren and I inherited some beautiful pieces. I’d open my cupboard and look at them and my other saris — my husband called it my ‘sari-looking exercise’. My friend Anju was much in the same straits. So, it was on a Friday night, end of February, when we were talking about how the sari-looking exercise goes each time and the two of us decided we’d wear saris more regularly,” says Ally. 

“I had been talking about wearing more saris this year and my friends have had to bear with this for three or four months till one person tagged me on a sari picture and nudged me to get started. It somehow led us to a Facebook pact, we thought we’d upload pictures and keep tabs on each other. We started on March 1 with the target of 100 saris, and by the time the second or third sari picture was uploaded, several people had joined in. Friends, friends’ friends…,” recalls Anju Maudgal Kadam, a business journalist and the founder-director of WebTv.in. If Ally “imagines herself as a Kanjeevaram Rani on another planet”, Anju has been a sari enthusiast at work and beyond ever since she was a “rookie reporter” in pursuit of stories. 

And the six yards of fabric weaves in stories aplenty. “When we started we never realised how the sari would emerge as a medium of communication. So many people shared stories, such personal memories — it was humbling. And this definitely has changed us for the better,” says Ally. And not all of it is impersonal. “The other day I called my mother and demanded that she tells me the story of a particular sari. She did and then she said ‘achha laga tumne phone kiya beta’ and I realised how long it had been since I had a conversation with my mother,” says Anju.

In its sixth week now, the pact has gone viral. “I was in Coimbatore recently and had casually posted if people wanted to do a sari meet and I ended up sharing stories with about 20 women,” says a palpably moved Ally. “There was a teacher, who actually found a Tulika Publication book about saris, read it aloud to her classroom of little children, had them bring in a sari each and share a story about the sari in the class. She also folded the saris in half and made sure each child got to wear the sari they’d brought in!” 

“People connect with painful stories, with happy memories, they call each other over a sari and then make Facebook conversation with random strangers about a picture they’ve uploaded — sometimes it moves from saris to nani ki achaar and that’s perfectly all right. You realise what we hoard as memories, what is real, what are our actual happy, aha moments,” muses Anju. 

The stories, the people, the enthusiasm have given shape to the amorphous idea ‘let’s do something about saris’. And now the beta version of a website 100sareepact.com has been tested. “We have been telling people that we had no agenda. But now actually we do. We want to create a non-commercial space for people to post their stories and pictures around saris,” says Ally. “We definitely have an agenda now — to celebrate the sari,” says Anju. 

There has already been a sari meet in Bangalore and a small one in Coimbatore, and Ally and Anju have plans to take it “everywhere”. Calcutta is very much on the radar. “Just make a sari date happen,” urges Ally. “We want people to reach into their cupboards and their memories.”

Anindita Mitra

TEAM T2’S TRYST WITH #100SAREEPACT

Saris have never been a wardrobe staple of mine. But I do own many of them. When I found the #100sareepact hashtag on my Facebook timeline, I didn’t think much of it. Till the morning I opened my wardrobe and chanced upon a pink sari I was given 15 years ago. It was the first sari I fell in love with. My aunt had bought it for me, ignoring my cousin’s commands to “get her the peach one”. My aunt had passed away years ago. But that sari flooded me with the memory of being young, being the “pampered baby” who had to just look at something to have it. 

I had worn that sari to university, to weddings of two of my closest friends, to work and even to a nightclub once! I am no longer a baby by a long shot and not even much of a babe anymore, to be honest. But when I wore it to work the other day, I felt the years fall away. And then I started peeking into the recesses of my wardrobe. The red kota bandhni that I threw a tantrum for and robbed my cousin of. The black, ‘sexy’ chiffon my other cousin got me and her instructions on exactly how modest the blouse should be. The white Dhakai an aunt used to wear. My mother wore it the other day and looking at the sari, I could almost smell the cinnamon-y apple strudels my aunt would bake. The purple silk I wore for my brother’s wedding. And I can hear the guests, at the absurdly beautiful ceremony, laughing. The off-white taant that my dad gave me for Poila Baisakh the year he passed away. I can’t bear to wear it. But I bring it out on days I miss him. I signed up for the #100sareepact just to live my memories once more. It’s about love. And sometimes love makes you tear up a bit, the way my saris do.
Disclaimer: This is not to say that I do not create artsy Instagram uploads of my saris. 

Anindita Mitra

Seven years ago, I climbed the main gate at Presidency University in a blue Bangalore silk sari — much to the awe of fellow journalists and the students, because we were not being allowed to enter the premises to cover an election incident. And I did it without help from anyone or a wardrobe malfunction.

So when my colleague joined the #100sareepact and prodded me to sign up, it made complete sense as I probably own at least 70 saris, apart from my mother’s treasure trove and my newly married sister’s stash. It was the perfect excuse to raid their wardrobes for all the saris I had been eyeing all this while. 

The earliest memory I have of wearing a sari is standing in a line in my blouse and petticoat, waiting to be draped for the annual concert of my dance school. Ten years later, I was changing saris in two minutes flat in between dance performances. That, I think, is where I get the confidence of wearing a sari to work, which means spending 10 hours in it, taking public transport and even braving the rain (not to mention the occasional professional hazard when one has to climb gates). 

I have now become the designated sari draper in my office. Not just my department, ladies from other departments too ask for my help when changing for weddings. And I don’t always know their names! It is a designation I am eager to hand over to someone else, because if nothing else, of the horror of being asked to pin the sari in 17 places (that is an exaggeration but a much deserved one) and then being dragged to the loo at every party to fix someone’s sari. 

I am also a compulsive sari shopper. I cannot walk out of any sari shop empty-handed (and that includes saris that cost Rs 150 as well). And I am surprised at how much there is behind every sari I have worn so far (I am on number 7). The only thing I hate about the pact is being photographed, especially alone. So following a colleague’s example, I have taken to uploading arty pictures of the sari and not of myself. 

Chandreyee Chatterjee