If Sarees Could Talk — Navaratri2023 — Day 7— Khun Saree with Itkal Border

To Bombay, With Love

Happy #Navaratri #Day7 from Nivrithi, Amma and Me. The color of the day was grey apparently. In keeping with my quest to post sarees that I want my girls to inherit, I have worn a black and white saree (after all black + white = grey, right?)

When someone asks me “where are you from? my answer is always, Bombay. That’s who I identify as. That’s my home. But the long answer for who am I or Where I am from is, “I am a Tamil speaking Bombayite whose family comes from Tirupati (in Andhra Pradesh)”. As I tell my girls all the time, I was the original immigrant.

I was raised in a almost 100% south Indian colony. Surrounded by predominantly Tamil speaking families. We were steeped in the south traditions, but imo adapted them beautifully to the existing culture in Bombay. And the Bombay I grew up in, so very welcoming, cosmopolitan, a mixture of people from so many different parts of the world, made it super easy to do. So, we had golu for Navratri — going home to home collecting prasadam, we had Ram Leela on the gymkhana grounds, lavish 10 days of celebrations for Ganesh Chaturthi with our own visarjan parades, matka for Gokul Ashtami. All this and 4am ganga snanam followed by Diwali crackers and south Indian bhakshanams, karthigai lamps, varsha paruppu celebrations ( Tamil new year) and so on and so forth. The integrations were wholesome while our elders preserved their south traditions and adapted them to the Bombay…