I'm a real Indian woman now!

I survived all of yesterday in a saree. I was kind of excited to try one one, but also fearful since I have been hearing that it takes a lot of composure to keep your saree arranged properly all day and white girls don't do so well in sarees. In fact, young girls here traditionally wear a pavida (a saree blouse appearing shirt over a long gathered skirt because they would never be able to manage saree. When they are older, like 9-12, they transition to pavida-davini, or half saree. This is a saree blouse and the same long broomstick skirt but with a long swath of cloth looped around the waist and over the shoulder- like just the top half of the saree over a skirt. They often wear matching skirt and half-saree with contrasting shirt, as if the skirt and cloth were one piece. Nowadays, a lot of girls in Namakkal and a lot of young women in Chennai wear salwar kameeze instead (this is the long shirt with loose pants and a scarf worn across the chest- think Pakistani dress).
So, since I've been here, I've been wearing a few salwar kameeze I had made by a tailor and also some pants and shirts or long skirts....but never saree. Many friends and coworkers had offered to lend me beautiful sarees, but you have to have the very fitted half-shirt to go underneath. This is a huge problem because everyone here it very small boned and the biggest girls are 5'2" and I can't even get their sleeves past my elbow because the bone is just bigger (not even talking muscle or fat parts...my elbow is bigger than the bicept part of their sleeve!!). So, in anticipation of a wedding we're attending, I had a saree blouse made to wear a really phenomenal silk saree of a friend's. And another friend let out a few inches from her blouse so it would fit and I wore her casual saree (synthetic, light summer material, not gold embroidered silk like a fancy one) to work yesterday.
The saree was actually pretty easy to wear...because Anandhi spent 20 minutes tying me into it! And then it was pinned in 3 places (this is a newbie thing to do) so it wouldn't fall off. And the middriff ventilation was nice...except I'm not used to having my upper back and part of my side showing at work...but here this is much more acceptable then having your ankles or cleavage showing...and I got so many compliments that I looked like I'd been wearing one for years.

And yesterday- Venus and Serena Williams played at a tourney in Bangalore and they posed wearing saree also...except they looked not nice at all...they had their stomachs all showing and they weren't tied right...but it was amusing. OH well, I"m glad I look better in saree then the Williams sisters cause I sure as heck won't ever play tennis like them!