When my eyes caught the sight in front of me, a blog began to emerge in my mind. Alongside, my hand took out the phone to capture some pictures, which will give the visual for the blog. It was when I took a look at the pictures before I started to pen this blog, I realised that pictures don’t do any justice to what the eyes captured. I then decided to have no visuals to support this blog but will rest it on each of you reading this blog, to bring the image and the colours described and create your own visuals.

A drive in the countryside revealed so many colours and many shades of these colours. Looking at these, I wondered if the weavers of sarees weaved them, using these colours and designs they saw in nature.. Why sarees? No reason for it. They just occured to me and stayed on.. :-).. What occured to me were some terms in Tamil / English that I have heard, when someone describes the colour of a saree.

The rain in the last few days / weeks combined with the rays of the sharp sunlight lent a green to the grass and specially to the leaves of the Neem tree (which were in abundance). This green was the parrot green (Kili pachchai). I recall seeing the Garden (Brand) sarees or the Silk sarees, with the green sheen. When one sees this shade of bright green, one may remove their eyes from the sight because it is very bright (kannai parikkaradhu – loosely translated, it means plucking the eyes).

As though nature decided that this bright green maybe too much to handle for the human eye, there was a stretch which had a canopy of leaves of bright green and shrubs of a darker green. Reminded me of sarees in bright green with a border of a dark green. The design of the border in valleys and peaks (the temple border).

Suddenly appeared this lean and thin tree which had the body of the leaves in green and the tips in a shade of red. There were also leaves which had some green leaves in the lower branches and some dry brown leaves in the top branches. Imagine a saree that is green with a border in a shade of red / maroon / brown; or vice versa. All over the green saree are patterns of red / maroon / brown drooping leaves; or vice versa.. The ‘Maanthulir’ shade – the new young leaf of the mango tree which has a green and also a shade of a maroon/ brown in it. Sometimes appearing green completely and sometimes taking on the brown / maroon colour, depending on the angle one looks at it. A saree of this colour is always a pleasure to see and drape.

A tree is a tree with or without branches and when you see a cow looking at it, it has its own charm. Here was this bare tree, that had a trunk that was greyish white and standing in front of it was a cow that was a beautiful shade of brown.. not the chocolate brown but a lighter version. A greyish white saree with a brown border.  Should the body of the saree have a pattern in it that has the same shade of brown as the border? Well, whoever wants to drape a saree with this combination can choose the pattern they want to have 🙂

If this wasn’t enough, then came a stretch of paddy field where they may have sown the crop a little while back. The paddy has just started to grow. Shoots of green smattered in the dark brown rich soil with water that seemed a lighter shade of brown in some places and taking on the grey reflection of the sky in the other places. Visualise a saree that is bright or light green with light grey and dark brown in it, in parts – Partly saree as it is called. Reminds of the half-saree worn by some teenagers in the Southern states of India.

It looked as though it was going to rain and when I looked up at the sky, what I saw were shades of grey and patchy white clouds. A light grey patch and very near to it was a darker grey patch (elephant grey as it is called) and then the white clouds. A saree with light and darker shades of grey teamed with a white blouse. An ‘evergrey’ combination. The grey makes one think that it is sombre but the white lifts up the spirits.

Move a little further and the grey sky has streaks of peach and pink. What a combination this is, especially in a cotton fabric!!! A neither light nor dark shade of grey with a border that is a pink rather than a peach. No patterns and no designs on it. My always favorite colour combination!!! A Pochampally saree would look beautiful in this combination, perhaps with some pattern in the body of the saree.

Out of the blue, emerged a blue sky with patches and patches of cotton white clouds. A saree that is sky blue in colour with blocks of white in whatever pattern. This colour gradient would so beautifully flow into one another – neither bright nor jarring but pleasant enough.. I can just imagine an Organdy saree in this combination.

Grass, trees, sky, animals.. anything else? Well. the flowers didn’t want to be left out and they appeared in a riot of colours – pink, red, yellow, orange as though saying, “Make a Chiffon using all these colours – combine all of them in one saree or any two or three or well!! even as a single shade, they can be used. The choice is yours to have a pattern or just a plain saree.”

Different fabric, different colours, different shades of these different colours, different patterns and designs – all in one attire called the Saree.. No wonder it is beautiful to drape one and carry it off in the best way that one can carry it!!

Saree – a weaver’s delight and also the draper’s..