Sari story: Satyam Shivam Sundaram to Mr India, how the nine yards reflected Bollywood's favourite tropes

Designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee’s recent comments about how Indian women who do not know how to drape a sari should ‘feel ashamed’ kicked up quite the row. Describing Kapoor’s imprint as auteur, Monika Mehta writes, in an essay titled Satyam Shivam Sundaram: proper Suturing of Sound, Scar, and Stardom, from the 2011 book, Censorship and Sexuality in Bombay Cinema, “In the film, the camera introduces us to Aman by showing a close-up of her beautiful, partly covered face and providing a generous view of her untrammelled breasts in a thin, white sari. The image has inspired the oeuvre of artist MF Husain, whose ‘Nautanki’ painting is accompanied by the note: “Tu aaj nachegi itna ke ghungroo tod degi.” Dixit, dancing to ‘Didi Tera Devar Deewana’ in a purple sari heavily embellished with crystals, is perhaps a flamboyant marker of Indian culture – a ‘good girl’ with permissible amounts of sass, gyrating at an occasion legitimised by society for a bit of saucy frolic – the godh bharai. Whereas Aman’s screen roles served to affirm her status as a ‘Westernised,’ ‘uninhibited’ heroine, Dixit’s dance performances stood in stark contrast to her conservative public persona.” By making expert sari-draping abilities a marker of culture in Indian women, Mukherjee has presumed that the sari is the preferred garment of the domesticated Indian woman, innocent of her sexuality and polite about its flowering. Mukherjee’s expectations of Indian women are influenced by Bollywood’s clichés and stereotypes, not by the woman who occasionally defies the trope and manages to wear a sari she does not know how to drape.