Tales of Antarjya

Happy Ganesh Chaturthi to all my dear readers! Ganapati Bappa Morya!! Well, I have been held up and hence the delay in posting. It was an auspicious day. Like most others, we too, have brought Bappa home. This is my first Ganesh Chaturthi after our wedding. My husband who is an ardent believer of Lord Ganesha, had been celebrating this day for the past nine years by bringing Ganapati home. This is the 10th year, and though we wanted to celebrate this day with much fervour and grandeur, we decided that it would be best to keep things minimal this year given that the entire nation is fighting a pandemic. It had been a hectic day throughout. Ever since I woke up this morning, I was running around the house, cleaning and picking up the mess that gets accumulated over the week. Thankfully, the pile of mess was much less. My husband and I went to the market nearby to purchase the essential supplies required for puja, returned home, and finished all arrangements. Also I had my regular office ...

Today, on the seventh day of August 2020, Friday, the sixth edition of National Handloom Day is being celebrated. The Union Textile Minister, Smriti Zubin Irani, of the Union Ministry of Textiles had announced earlier that the day would be celebrated through a virtual event to avoid any mass gathering amid the coronavirus pandemic. In view of this event, she had asked celebrated personalities and masses to share images of themselves adorned in handloom clothing, jewellery or any other form of handcraft item. To honour this novel idea, I decided to showcase tonight one of my favourite sarees from my handloom collection. This electric peacock blue number is one of the finest sarees in my cupboard. It is a Bengal weave handloom saree, the region of origin being unknown to me as I had bought this back in the year 2017 from a reseller at my hometown of Siliguri, who supported the local handloom weavers by selling their finished products from door-to-door. Among a pile of sarees she had pull...

This beautiful magenta and green woven saree is the first Kanjivaram/ Kanchipuram saree I own. This saree is a gift from my mother-in-law, given to me on my Mangala Charan / Aashirbaad ceremony. However, it wasn't my sasuma 's choice. My husband had handpicked this lovely saree from Pothy's in Bengaluru, though with a little help from my sister-in-law. The body of the saree is bold magenta with large floral motifs all over in the same colour. The pallu is green in coloor with fine golden zari work all over. The dual-colour contrast is quite in trend these days. The best part of the saree is it's border. Look at the zari work which is not flat, but continuous rows in the form of straight vines with leaf-shaped motifs on it. The top has two rows and the bottom has four. The motifs are equidistant as well as alternately spaced. The blouse piece that came along with the saree is green and of the same fabric. I got it tailored with a round neck in the front and a wide, deep...