What she’d wanted was to spend time with Tanvi, to gently meander the conversation toward any tells. She should have known better, picked something that involved getting the two of them away from the house. Meena’s error had been in not being specific. That was how she wound up standing in the bedroom like a mannequin with her arms akimbo as the aunties trussed her up in three yards of orange silk. All she’d said was that she was curious about saris and how effortless they looked even though she was sure it was more complicated. A few hours later, the three had descended on her and were using her like a real-life dress-up doll.
“Stay still, Meena.” Sabina spoke with a giant safety pin between her lips. “Keep your arms spread out.”
“A cotton sari would have been better. Silk is too hard for practice.” Uma tucked fabric into the pale orange skirt tied so tight, it made it difficult to breathe.
“What am I, an old woman? I only have silk saris.” Tanvi unfurled the pleats and started again. “And since you gave Meena such a hard time about wanting to learn these things, forcing you both to do this is your punishment.”
“I didn’t realize this was going to be so complicated,” Meena said.
They ignored her.
“Tanvi, you’re doing the pleats for Gujarati style.” Sabina nudged her friend. “We’re showing her English style.”
Tanvi sighed. “I can never tell.”
Uma stepped back and sat in the chair by the french doors. “I’m going to look it up on YouTube.”
“Eh,” Sabina argued. “You don’t have to look it up. I know.”
Tanvi winked at Meena. “Sabina made us practice every week when we were teenagers.”
“It’s easy to forget when it’s not something you do every day.” Sabina turned Meena toward her. “Pay attention. There are two areas you must pleat. One in the front of the skirt, and the other is the sash. Both have to be neat and crisp.”
“But you can leave the piece over your shoulder unpleated so that the fabric hangs over your arm and you carry it on your wrist.” Tanvi tucked the pleats in the front, pulling the already-tight skirt and with it Meena’s whole body. “I know it’s uncomfortable, but a loose skirt can cause a wardrobe malfunction, and you don’t want to take a few steps and find yourself naked from the waist down.”
“You get used to it,” Uma said. “My mother always wore saris, even in winter. She had a permanent indent around her waist from the tight cotton string that held up the chanyo.”
“I’m surprised the woman wasn’t severed in half,” Meena mumbled.
“It’s not fashion if women aren’t suffering.” Uma ticked off the list on her fingers. “Heels, bras, skinny jeans.”
“The beauty of a sari is that it looks effortless in the way it hangs down your body.” Tanvi straightened the pleats.
“Even though it’s all held together by a blouse and chanyo that’s tied just short of suffocation,” Uma said. “That’s why I never wear it.”
Meena saw an in. “Did you teach this to your daughter?”
Uma shook her head. “She decided to learn from YouTube. She’s a femme lesbian and loves all of this.”
“I helped Kam when she couldn’t figure out pleating from videos,” Sabina said.
“I named her Kamaladevi after an Indian social justice warrior, and she’s known to the world as Kam thanks to these two,” Uma explained.
“OK, let’s see how you look.” Tanvi pulled Meena back by the shoulders so they could see her whole figure in the vanity mirror.
Meena didn’t recognize herself from the neck down. The sari was dramatic in the way it fell around her with little peeks of skin at the waist. “How do you walk in this?”
“Carefully,” Tanvi said.
Meena looked at Tanvi through the mirror, their faces next to each other. She scanned their features for similarities. The shapes of their eyebrows, the lengths of their noses, their hairlines where the forehead met the scalp. Nothing conclusive.
“What do you think?” Uma asked.
She looked like someone else, someone more glamorous, more graceful. She could see herself as an Indian woman. She fit with these three behind her. The four of them didn’t look alike, but there was a similarity to their skin tones, the shapes of their foreheads, the way the bones sat in their cheeks. She blinked to clear the wetness in her eyes. “It fits.”
“You are beautiful.” Tanvi’s eyes watered. “Made to wear a sari. Like Hema Malini.”
“Who?”
“I know this is not because of your age but your lack of familiarity with old Bollywood,” Tanvi said, “so I won’t take offense.”
“Hema Malini is not old Bollywood,” Sabina argued. “Nargis was the original.”
“We should watch movies with you.” Tanvi clapped her hands together. “They have subtitles.”
“OK, now you try.” Uma removed the safety pins and unfurled the silk.
Meena saw herself in only an oversize cropped blouse made from the same fabric as the sari and a fitted skirt that brushed the tops of her feet.
“Here you go.” Tanvi handed the pile of silk to Meena.
“Uh.” She didn’t know what to do, hadn’t been paying attention.
The three of them laughed.
“I’ll text you a few YouTube videos,” Uma said.
“You can keep all of this.” Tanvi took the silk from her and began to unfurl it.
“Oh,” Meena said. “I could buy my own.”
“Don’t be silly. That’s not how things work here. The right response to a gift is to say thank you.” Tanvi made Uma hold the edges of the yards-long silk and layered it together into a neat fold.
Meena nodded. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. And don’t take out the pins from the blouse when you change out of it. My chest is three times bigger than yours, so I’ll sew the blouse to your size.”
Meena put the armload of orange silk on the bed.
“Do you even need to wear a bra?” Uma asked. “Because if I was that flat chested, I wouldn’t bother.”