Page 77 - DENG503_INDIAN_WRITINGS_IN_LITERATURE

Unit 8: Rupa Bajwa: Sari Shop—Introduction to the Text

hair and straightened his kurta to make up for the feet, and walked in. He went to his allotted Notes
place and sat down cross-legged. The shop was an old-fashioned one and there were no counters.
The entire floor space was spread out with thick mattresses covered with white sheets, and on
these mattresses sat the shop assistants every day, facing the customers, and endlessly rolling and
unrolling yards upon yards of important coloured fabric.
‘Namaste Ramchand Bhaiya. Late again?’ grinned Hari, sitting some distance away. Hari was the
youngest among all the shop assistants. He was a careless, cheerful, young man with a cheeky
face, who often got shouted at by Mahajan. However, unlike the effect they had on Ramchand,
these unpleasant encounters always left Hari completely unfazed. In fact, on slightly dull days,
they even cheered him up. ‘In from one ear, and out from the other,’ he would always say,
beaming broadly, after Mahajan had spent considerable time and energy telling him what he
thought of him. Because of Hari’s junior status, his inexperience and his indifference to the intricacies
of fabric, he had been put in charge of Paraag Daily Wear Saris and Paraag Fancy Saris for
Occasions. One didn’t need much skill or specialized knowledge of fabric to sell these. It would be
a long time before Hari would be put in charge of anything else. Not that he cared. Ramchand
smiled back at him. ‘What to do, yaar?’ ‘We could hear him shouting at you even through the
door,’ Hari said, still grinning. ‘What to do, yaar?’ Ramchand said again, this time more gloomily.
‘Never mind,’ said Hari comfortingly. ‘You did a good deed for our Mahajan. If some people don’t
get to shout at someone early in the morning, they can’t digest their breakfast properly. Now that
raakshas Mahajan will have very good digestion.’ Hari cackled at his own joke. ‘For that is the sort
of man our Mahajan is,’ he added, winking at Ramchand, and cackled again. Then he sighed
theatrically.
Gokul sat placidly folding some saris into neat rectangles. He was in charge of very expensive
crêpes, and in the wedding season he also helped with ornate wedding lehngas and saris. He was
a grave-looking man in his forties who took his work very seriously. Mahajan thought a great deal
of his experience and his sincerity, but this still didn’t save Gokul from occasional tongue lashes
from Mahajan. About ten years back, Sevak Sari House had also decided to stock chunnis. For
there were many Sardaarnis from old Sikh families, matriarchs as well as young women, who
came in to buy saris and asked hopefully whether they had chunnis as well. For them, saris were
necessary, they were fashionable, but their real clothes were salwaar kameez. And so, after many
of them had wistfully enquired about chunnis, saying that Sevak Sari House was so dependable,
and that it was so difficult to get really good quality stuff in chunnis these days, Bhimsen and
Mahajan had put their heads together and had decided to stock chunnis too.
And Gokul had made it his business to know his chunnis very well. There were no ordinary
chunnis in Sevak Sari House. They sold saris, so if some chunnis had to be there, they had to be
special. All of them were two and a half metres in length, and of the required width. No well-
dressed sardaarni liked a chunni shorter or narrower than that; they thought that those kind of
chunnis were for Hindu women or for very young girls. Apart from the length, the quality was
taken care of. There were pure chiffon chunnis, there were lovely white silk chunnis that could be
dyed to match any silk salwaar kameez, there were gold-edged bridal odhnis in red, pink and
maroon, there were white chunnis with discreet light-coloured embroidery at the borders for
widows from good families, there were the colourful ones embroidered with traditional phulkari
work — usually bought by Sikh women for their daughters’ trousseau, and many others. And
Gokul could handle all the customers who came in asking for chunnis. Despite this, Gokul didn’t
swagger. He was in awe of Mahajan and was always warning Hari to be careful not to get into
Mahajan’s bad books.

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