Five Yards of Disappointment

I'm a little depressed. I saw an ad of Vastrabharana on Saturday and was enthused. I have a difficult equation with sarees. I love the various kinds of cotton sarees, they look so good on others! And though I hardly get to wear them outside, it's a small-scale fantasy of mine to hoard them and wear them some day. Vastrabharana's location was Chitrakala Parishat which is pretty far but we've never been there before so I took everyone along. I hardly stepped in and saw the crowd and I chickened out. I glanced at some sample price tags and I just couldn't proceed. It was me in 10th standard, that ghost from the past. I hated myself at the moment. Of course since then I've made myself feel better by saying that they are simply overpriced and I could get them elsewhere cheaper. But the thing is that I spend my yearly increments only on inflation and nothing else. Affordability is in my brain than in my purse and I'd rather be a miserable saving-for-my-hundredth-year lady than a happy live-now person.

Anyway, we also went to the art gallery upstairs which calmed me because it was almost empty, so much in contrast with the number downstairs. There are some nice landscapes and portraits by the Roerichs and curious info sheets on old-time European and Asian cultures. The security personnel far outnumbered us and seemed glad to see anybody. One of them accompanied us and she asked me if Rishi was my son. I said yes and she said he's just so tall. Then she looked wistfully at me and said if only I could colour my hair, nobody could say he was my son. It didn't make me happy, for a change.