When I was a little child, my mother had a few nice mekhela sadors that she would alternate wearing to weddings. One was a shade of purple and another was the most beautiful resplendent peacock blue, she had got during my eldest Mama's wedding. Sometimes I would wear them while playing with dolls, pretending to be grown-up. Later, she added few more to her collection, purchased from one of her friends Medhi aunty, who used to bring them from Sualkuchi and cater to everyone in Shillong. I believe it was common for middle class India at that time to not have too much of anything and still be very happy.
I didn't have too many myself, when I moved to the US, apart from the few from my wedding. I never felt the need to get more, since I didn't wear them much. But once we got here, we got sucked into a social whirlpool and it spun out a rainbow of shades of mekhela sadors, adorned by the beautiful ladies, I now call friends. Since then my closet has grown by a few mekhela sadors, every year.
The two things that inspire me the most about the attire, is that the beautiful Assamese ladies embrace and adorn it full throttle. Whenever I visit Guwahati, I am thoroughly impressed by women just going about their daily business, fluttering beautiful weaves. There is no giving up on mekhela sador for any other attire!!! The second and even more important one is that the weavers and designers keep coming up with innovations in color, design, fabric and style, always keeping it interesting.
Here are two recent trends. In the first picture, I am wearing a pastel lavender mekhela sador with rose gold copper guna, in contrast to yellow gold guna used traditionally and in the second picture I am wearing a pistachio mekhela sador in tone-on-tone metallic guna and oh how I love them!!!❤️
No comments:
Post a Comment