JOIN USThe essentials of a nickname being the matching factor, few other options can be more matching than Matching Blouse Mami, given to a fastidious lady in our locality. MBM, who invests her lollies on cholis, has so perfected the art of choosing the right blouse that fuses with her saree, she has hard-earned that name and had become the cynosure of all envious feminine eyeballs.
The question, “Which came first? The egg or the hen?” can as well be likened to the poser whether MBM buys the saree first and hunts for the matching blouse or the other way round.
Wedded to a well-to-do gentleman of leisure, MBM can be spotted during sleepy afternoons in the humongous saree shops in Chennai’s T Nagar, her husband, sheepishly following her as an escort, porter and more importantly a jingling moneybag.
Stories, probably apocryphal, abound about her expertise in assessing blouse bits. Like in any Kerala household where half a dozen coconuts will always be held in stock, a dozen blouse bits will be stacked in her dresser. Her exposure to choli bits is so deep that on seeing one presented to her, folded rumali roti-like on a plate, she can instantaneously assess whether it is silk, two-by-two or bizzy-lizzy, one metre or 80 centimetre, cut from a bale or bought as a bit. And more importantly if the one she gave away six months back has boomeranged.
Her recurrent dream may unfold thus. MBM is frozen helpless in one of the saree shops. “Krishna!” she pleads raising her hands Panchali-like heavenwards. “Here I am with five of my favourite saree outlets unable to offer me a saree matching the blouse I have in hand. You who took away sarees from bathing gopis can also offer several if need be.
Krishna! Mukuntha! Murare! Help this poor woman.” Hearing this supplication, Lord Krishna would appear, His right hand in the ‘abhayahastha’ pose, from which colourful Kancheepuram, Kollegal, Banaras, Dharmavaram and Thirubuvanam sarees will roll out engulfing her.
MBM may feel proud that she didn’t have to hunt for a husband who will be a perfect match. He is her aunt’s son, marked from birth as her mate. “Like a saree with attached blouse,” she is reported to have said joyously. That he on his part, might be bemoaning his fate, while cooling his heels in saree shops, may as well be the flip side of matrimony.