Celebrating SA’s diversity in saris

SOMEONE once described the sari as “six yards of pure grace, elegance and beauty”. Another commentator described it as the sexiest garment ever, “showing the right amount, and covering the right amount”.

Yet others praise the sari for its versatility “because it suits every body type and every face”.

Nowhere were all these attributes better illustrated than on North Beach on Sunday when hundreds of women took part in the annual Durban Sari Stroll – now into its ninth year – which is today celebrated as one of the major and unique highlights of the city’s cultural calendar.

In a kaleidoscope of colour against the seablue backdrop of the Indian Ocean, the women of the country came out to celebrate life in all its splendour, its richness of colour and its unifying diversity. They came in all shapes and sizes – the very young and the not-so-young; they came from all race groups and communities; some in simple pastel garments, others in richly coloured and intricately decorated drapes.

There were mothers, daughters, aunts, sisters, friends and grandmothers all united in a common cause – to promote the wearing of the sari, the national dress of women in India for over 2 000 years and hopefully a growing trend in local communities.

And if you didn’t own a sari or didn’t know how to drape one on Sunday, it didn’t really matter. The organisers were quite happy to hand out saris to participants and show them how to wear it.

As Kamlesh Gounden, one of the organisers of the event, explained, the Sari Stroll hoped to encourage younger generations of women to maintain links with the tradition of wearing saris.

“Saris give women confidence to walk around gracefully and elegantly. It can be formal and relaxed, modest, and also, if you want, a bit risqué.”

The embracing spirit of unity that prevailed was one that the city authorities should encourage and preserve because it celebrates what the founders of our democracy had envisaged after liberation from race-based apartheid.

The Sari Stroll helps bring together people of diverse communities, faiths and cultures and is an occasion that Durban should promote to encourage its citizens to understand and learn more about cultures outside their own.

The organisers, who put in a great deal of commitment and effort into the exercise, should be commended for their contribution to promoting inter-cultural relations and social cohesion in our society.