Stars in Nine Yards...

Mumbai's finest, clicked by my blogfriend Magiceye, and posted as part of his 365 Project today.

A common sight in Mumbai, round the year. Household help ladies walking from house to house doing their jobs, in their traditional permanent attire of 9 yard sarees. Day after day.  Perhaps saving for a daughter's marriage, perhaps for a sick spouse's medicines,  and sometimes because they simply head the household in the absence of anyone else and must provide for the family.

 They remain unchanged, and firm, in a world, where people  not only change the types of attire  depending on work, play, celebration or mourning, but some folks even  surgically change the shape of , say, their nose and lips etc etc

And so,
Put your soft pink
hands together ,
for our show stoppers,
at the Bandra India Bai-log Fashion Day...

The veteran,
Shantabai,
resplendent in pink and turquoise,
designed by
Nauvari and Nauvari
Mumbai's oldest;
and Kanta
her niece,
wearing one
with a slightly modern drape
designed
by
ChinchPokli Stars
and
copied by Angelina Jolie
at the recent awards,


Necks adorned
with gold and yellow
freshly washed pure cottons,
caressing bangled hands
roughened with
a lifetime of
soap and utensil powder;
they walk together,
on the
bitumen ramp,
aware of life's potholes ....

And unlike those,
who need to turn back
at the end of the ramp,
these two,
freshly scrubbed,
and
shining in the Sun,
all Achilles heels
disappearing
in their
comfort  Hawai Chappals,
continue from place to place,
dazzling all
with their abilities,
empathies, and energy,
leaving
all those size zeroes,
with false smiles
teetering on their heels....