Saree Shopping

I tagged along with my host mom and her sister in law to shop for sarees on Laxmi Road- the most popular shopping place in Pune. They were looking for summer sarees- cotton ones and light colors to stay cool. As we walked down the street and passed teens in jeans and Western tops, Didi asked me, "Don't girls get hot wearing these tight clothes?" Sarees are apparently cool because they expose the back and midriff while being loose on the bottom. They can be 10 ft of fabric, sometimes longer, and it must take some time to master wrapping them around you. We went into 3 shops- you take off your shoes, sit on a thin mattress on the floor and men pull out dozens of brightly colored, elaborately patterned fabrics. Didi would say "white and cotton" and they would bring colored, non-cotton, then try to convince us how nice they were. The best was when the men would open up the fabric and hold it up on themselves to display (this isn't only in saree shops- men are workers in every store and restaurant, you don't find women working in any kind of sales job). The walls of the saree shops are lined with hundreds of designs and materials. There was a lot of arguing at the first shop and I was convinced that we were leaving without purchasing anything until I saw Didi's sister in law paying for 3 sarees at the counter. One of the workers also threw down the words "modern" about the patterns and how they were changing with the times. I even saw one with ships on it which was just strange. Many of them just appear to me as fancy tablecloths, which doesn't mean they won't make good sarees...I just view it differently. I also have a terrible American perception of color combinations- like how orange and black means Halloween or red and green means Christmas, and I refuse to wear those because of the holiday associations. In between stores, we stopped for a drink of coconut water where the man hacked off the very top of the coconut with his machete like knife, stuck a straw in and handed it to me. I've heard good and bad things about the taste, but I didn't think it had any taste at all. We ended with a visit to the blouse shop to find matching fabric for the little shirt that you wear underneath the saree. I think they're quite pretty but have no need to buy one unless I find a wedding to go to, and Didi told me I could borrow any of hers if I had to. She has many gorgeous ones. Who wants to bring a new fad to America?