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queen victoria

sarees tell stories

maharanis, construction workers, ics officers – a saree wearer’s longish ramble

six yards, five and a half metres, sometimes nine yards, of material. you have to wrap it around yourself. tuck here, tuck there, make the pleats, hold the pallu in place. it must be so difficult. one must sit still or move around in luxury cars or palanquins if one is in a saree. yet a saree has never demanded that. not really, not ever. in fact, if your palanquin is late, you can simply hitch up your saree a…

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indi

have you seen the koh-i-noor?

again a clamour for its return starts. and now i am older, even if not wiser, and i must see it’s not as simple as it looks. or looked, when i was eight and nine and ten, even twelve and thirteen and was told an uncomplicated, straightforward thing: the koh-i-noor diamond is the most beautiful diamond in the world and it belongs to us… first nadir shah stole it and then the british. for some reason quite unfathomable, but then…

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