The Cloth Does Not Define Me

By Anjali Mallur

For the first time in my life, I wore a saari—
its threads were aged, its story long told,
yet the moment wrapped around me, tender and new.
I thought—perhaps—my mother would see me anew,
a girl softening into womanhood,
the arc from youth bending quietly toward something else.

She smiled.
But not the kind that danced to the corners of her eyes—
no, this smile was still, heavy,
as if she saw not just her daughter,
but a bride-to-be,
a woman being wrapped in ritual,
in silken cages sewn with holy threads.

The saree was hers,
worn in the days just after I was born—
a symbol of beginnings and bindings both.
Now I wore it,
not just as cloth,
but as inheritance—
not of tradition, but of truth.

My mother,
a songbird with clipped wings,
had once sung behind gilded bars,
thinking her silence would be music.

But I—
I cannot sing those same songs.
I do not wear sorrow in my folds.
I wield the fabric like fire,
slaying shadows of fear in her eyes.

This saree—
it does not speak of submission.
It does not symbolise freedom lost to marriage.
It is not the evidence of fading identity
It is just cloth—
and I, the meaning within it.

I wipe the tears brimming in her gaze,
and say,
“I am still your fearless girl.”

I will not walk your path,
but I will honour it.
I will seek love,
rooted in respect,
anchored in the deep waters of understanding.

And I will be fine.

In this saree,
I do not disappear—
I rise.