Finally, I found the tailor, Pintu, at his crammed shop. When I asked him for the second-hand saris, he vanished into his store and reappeared with a few bundles, each containing about fifty saris. He opened them, and there I sat in the middle of this huge pile of threeehundred or so saris. I started to select and compose them by colours and types, in groups of ten saris each.
Back in my workshop I tore the clothes into bands of varied width and length, and I bound and sewed and braided them into strings. The seams showed as thickenings, as knots – codes for events, filled with my projected imaginations of the lives of the women who had worn the saris – all imaginations of my own making.
These strings speak of lives in wealthier circles, since these saris had not been wrapping the millions of women who live below the poverty line and fight for their family's daily survival. Those women would rather wear simple, colourful cotton saris, would wear them till they fall apart. The saris I had bought at the Golden Temple speak of another world, a world that actually does not fit into Pintu's shop. A world that is strictly devided by wealth and caste, by status and social code. The simple saris, I would have to find them in another place.
