The first memories of most Indian children of my generation are their mother’s saris. The ballooning cloth, soft cotton textures, and beautiful prints are a young child’s comfort cushion. Indian mothers like my own are a sensory delight, a long single plait to swing around, colorful mesmerizing bindis to focus on, and scents and textures of sandalwood soaps and cotton saris that create a lifetime of memories stretching back to the earliest one can recall. When I was young, my mother only wore saris—when she cooked with me propped up on her hip, when she ran errands, and even when she slept. She never adjusted to the more practical salwar-kameez until my teens, and even then every few days she would revert back to the comfort of her cotton sari.
I grew up in westernized Bombay (Mumbai) wearing mostly jeans and t-shirts throughout my life. I came to New York in the early nineties, and although there were many levels of adaptation, learning to dress and fit in was not one of them. My young children never enjoyed the textures and smells of Indian mothers; their sensory comfort was found in soft toys and favorite pillows. In a way, the sari separated my worlds, inhabiting a space of my childhood in India and memories of motherly care, whereas Western dress was the world of my adulthood, a New Yorker, practical and proud with my ability to seamlessly assimilate. My mother too seemed to transform in these separated worlds, looking sophisticated and confident in her beautifully woven saris and appearing awkward and unsure of herself in the ill-fitting jeans and oversized t-shirts that she had purchased to wear when visiting me in New York.
Left: Alice Neel (American, 1900–1984). Mother and Child, c. 1962. Oil on canvas, 40 × 27 ¼ in. (101.9 × 69.2 cm). Private collection © The Estate of Alice Neel. Right: The author and her mother c. 1960s
When I first saw the image of an Indian woman in a sari with a young child painted by Alice Neel, in a presentation by curators at The Met, I was instantly drawn to it. Now featured in the exhibition Alice Neel: People Come First, the picture was so familiar yet confusing—I have a similar intimate photograph of my own mother wearing a sari and carrying me. Our pictures are from the same decade, and Neel painted hers in Upper Manhattan, not far from where I currently live. The young child and I were probably around the same age, as were our mothers. Here was another Indian woman in her beautifully printed cotton sari, her hair braided in a long single plait just like my mother’s, her bindi prominent along with her subtle gold jewelry—she was my mother’s counterpart, but living in New York in the 1960s. She seemed to exude the conflicting emotions of a recent immigrant, overwhelmed and hesitant, yet betraying a quiet excitement. It was one of the rare images of an Indian American woman that I had seen in a Western museum.
“The sari separated my worlds, inhabiting a space of my childhood in India and memories of motherly care.”
I was born in Mumbai a few years after the Immigration and Naturalization Act was passed in 1965, which allowed Indians, especially those with advanced degrees, to migrate to the United States. During my early childhood, I knew several relatives and family friends—mostly scientists, engineers, and doctors—who had left for America. This phenomenon, called the “Brain Drain,” affected India deeply. Many of these families arrived in metropolitan cities like New York but struggled to assimilate into their new homeland. The women, especially, stood out in their traditional outfits and bindis; even those who had adapted to Western dress happily reverted to saris on special occasions.
Installation view of Alice Neel: People Come First
Although they often came from progressive Indian families, in America they encountered an unfamiliar brand of sixties Western feminism. It was an era of radical gender equality, of marches demanding equal opportunity and the same rights as men. And here were successful Indian American women—academics, doctors, and engineers—independent in spirit yet conventional in appearance. Many of these women had learned to negotiate rigid societal structures with tact and diplomacy, not shedding one identity for another but rather incorporating each into a stronger whole.
The sari embodied this unique brand of feminism, traditional in appearance but progressive and confident in actions and purpose. It is this legacy that enabled me to thrive when I came to America in 1994. And it is this legacy that has placed an Indian American woman in the second highest office of the US government. So to the woman in Alice Neel’s picture, to the woman in our Vice President’s picture, and to the woman in my own picture, I join my hands in a respectful namaste, with gratitude!
