My first...

...Kiss? No. My first sari. It's beautiful. Green with golden and red flower embroideries. When Samir, the groom, asked me what color I wanted it to be, I hesitated. Red maybe? No you can't, he said. It is bad luck. The bride wears red. White? not an option either. Dark green it was. The bride and the groom to be, graciously found time amidst their crazy busy schedule and traveled all the way from the UAE to India to get me my special sari. Yes, just for that. Well at least I'd like to think they did. After back and forth bbm messaging, my heart was set on one, yet still remained, before it lands over my shoulder how will this silken beauty fly to me?

I stormed out of the grocery store when Samir messaged me again. His friend had just checked in at the hotel and was waiting for me to pick up the sari. Sam's friend Lynn was a stewardess, and she was stopping over in Toronto for two days. She was also carrying my sari.

You have to meet her at her hotel, said Samir. I will get there somehow just send me the name, I texted back. But it was too easy, surely it was meant to be. My sari was meeting me at the Courtyard by Marriott just across from my appartment building.

I felt like I was being mummified as she wrapped and wrapped 6 yards of sari around me. Lynn explained that I will definitely need someone to help me when the time was right. She continued with a series of folds and wraps et voila!

But the Bengali tailor or the cocoon, to whom I entrusted my caterpillar, begged to differ. To him, I was no better than an indo-canadian girl who knows nothing about self-wrapping and he would be treating me like one. He promised a sari like a mature butterfly, a sari ready to fly. All wrapped up and all I needed to do was hook it up. A sari with a shortcut.