I ended up meeting Jed for lunch yesterday, which was lovely -- I'm going to be glad to go home, no doubt, but I'm going to miss being able to just call Jed up and make lunch plans with him. That's been v. nice. We had cheap sushi and talked about my cover and SH stuff. Nice.
Afterwards, I sat in a cafe and actually wrote for a bit. They kicked me out of that cafe when they closed at 4 (business folks, feh), but I eventually found a Starbucks which actually had free wireless broadcast from a hotel next door. Caught up on e-mail and the like, until finally it was time to go to Jeremy's for dinner. The baby is five weeks old and insanely cute. It is so small!
This morning, I have somehow inveigled Mahmud to actually come sari shopping with me. He gets to laugh at my incompetence -- I always feel utterly clueless if I go sari shopping without my mother. Pathetic, but true. I'm quite sure I'm getting gypped on the prices -- she bargains them down to half what they initially ask, and I bet they initially ask her less too. I think I get white people prices. I wonder if it'll be any different today, given that I'm going up in company of a brown man. Hmmm....
I also don't know if I'm actually going to buy a sari -- I may just buy a few yards of fabric to first use as backdrop and then cut up for cushions and the like. We'll see. I also have a yearning for a type of clothing this woman I know in Chicago wears -- selwar-type tops, heavily-embroidered, but only waist-length and fairly fitted. I don't know if she cuts down regular selwars or if they're just selling them like that these days. I wants one, my pretties...
A bit from yesterday's writing. This is all exploratory writing, which isn't really something I've done before. It's liberating in a way, to write paragraphs and pages without being certain that they'll actually be used...
He had never thought of himself as the manly type, no macho cave man. It was one reason why Gabriel had always found men easier than women. The few women he'd been involved with had always seemed to want more maleness from him -- more of their idea of maleness, at least. They'd wanted him decisive, forceful, even a little bit of a bully. He had no interest in those games, had turned to other men instead. Shefali asked nothing like that from him -- demanded no response. But her quiet bleakness drew Gabriel forward, made him want to reach out and caress the short, silky black strands that fell to shield her face. Made him want to push them back, to tilt up her face and kiss her, gently, insistently, until she relaxed and warmed to him. He wondered what had happened, that she had come to this.
He'd known she was was small, in theory -- barely five feet tall, so how could she not seem small? Especially when she stood next to Roshan, the lanky length of him. But Shefali was so vibrant, so fierce, that he'd never quite registered how small she really was. Slight, bony -- and as she sat on the bed with her knees pulled up to her chest, naked under the thin white sheet, Gabriel was surprised to discover a fragility in her. It drew an unwilling tenderness from him, a desire to shelter and protect.
My guess – she’s probably not just cutting them down, because then you don’t get the nice border at the bottom. Lord and Taylor sells things like that, as do Indian stores for the American, but I imagine it’s cheaper to tell your Mom, who will get something nicer and tailored from India, often for half the cost.
My Mom usually has things made, using saris that she doesn’t want to wear anymore. I have 3-4 less fitted things like what you’re talking about that I love because they work so well with American pants. They’re dressy enough for social outings without my having to wear the whole deal. I prefer the straight-line – it’s been very accomodating for a range of weight loss. The tailor she found for the first one, was luck – but they do such a beautiful job, with lining and covered buttons in exactly the right color and using the sari border… For the more recent batch, they took one of my well-loved old ones with them to copy.
Good luck and show us pictures when you find something.