Who knew sari was a thing, till my special day arrived. Mom entered the room with six yards of blessings that had to be wrapped around me. I thought sari was the most uncomfortable thing to be placed on your body until mom started draping it on me, and told me what each step of its draping symbolized. For me, it was just a fabric but soon I realized that it was beyond all the thoughts I had about it. Draping it was a great deal; as soon as mom started she uttered a few words that conquered my soul.
She told that how by wrapping it around me she was covering me with all the affection, care and blessings from my loved ones. When it’s wrapped properly, securing all the blessings, we move forward to the next step of folding the pleats. Each pleat that you fold, holds you with a responsibility towards you and the ones around whom your life is centered. By tucking in your pleats, you make sure and portend yourself to live up to all those responsibilities fully.
Now comes the major part of draping, which is draping the pallav to your shoulder. Once, you are sure that the wrapping and tucking of pleats is done at its finest, you fold the remaining sari to your left shoulder. By doing so, you gather all the courage, will, determination, sincerity and love that you have in your heart and put yourself forward as a lady that knows well the value of her strength and decency.
It was the wearing of a sari that I realized, I finally turned into a complete woman from just a girl. Now, I knew my responsibilities and held the courage to fulfill them. This sari taught me what the world couldn’t and had such a great impact on my mind that now I knew the importance of decency mixed with elegance.
Points:
Time spent:
IP address:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
Are you sure you want to delete this comment? This cannot be undone.
Mark this comment as a review? Points will be awarded to the poster.
Your comment was posted, but it wasn’t long enough to count as a review. Reviews need about four complete sentences (at least 250 characters). Try writing another review that explains your thoughts in more detail — the author will appreciate it, and you’ll earn points for it.
140,613 Literary Works • 673,552 Reviews
I sort of ignored this when it first came out, but I decided to revisit it to see what was happening. And while it wasn't entirely impressive, it did show that the author was very intimate with the topic at hand, and therefore I quite enjoyed it despite its flaws. I do, however, suggest you put it through a spellchecker, as there seem to be some mistakes in the whole of it. I'll mention some, but I'm not a spellchecking sort of guy, so I won't focus on that too much.
The Beginning
I don't entirely understand what you mean when you say "was a thing". Did the protagonist not understand what a sari was before her mother gave it to her? Did the protagonist think the sari just wasn't important anymore, and therefore wasn't a 'thing'? I feel like you could've built your description a bit on that, as it didn't seem too clear. Maybe "Who knew the beauty of the sari, till my special day arrived?" Not entirely accurate, either, but it's just a suggestion.
The Ending
Your language is a bit stunted and strange. For example the italicized and the bolded lines aren't necessarily wrong, it's just that they look weird when read out. I would've said "It was by wearing the sari that I realized" and "Turned from a little girl to a full-grown woman." It just seems to flow better. Also, the underlined 'knew' is supposed to be 'know'. Grammatical error.
Main Criticisms
-Again, I feel as if you could've used a bit of the spellchecker in this case. I've read up a lot of works recently that feel like they were translated from Google Translate, and I just don't think they didn't put much thought and effort into the work to put it through Grammarly or some other spellchecking device. It's just a small thing, but it makes your writing seem much better.
-I wish you described the tradition of the sari with more detail. This is supposed to be such a beautiful moment for our protagonist, but there weren't any personal anecdotes, no beautiful descriptions to help the audience feel the way the protagonist is feeling--it's all just vague descriptions of what a sari does and how to wear it. You seem to be intimate with how to wear a sari, so why don't you describe in terms of its tradition? Of the respect one might gain if one wears a sari? Of what the patterns might represent? Just a suggestion.
Take care,
--Elliot.
Hiya, Amelia here for a short review.
I found this piece incredibly interesting to read, and enjoyed every word of it. I loved the way you described what each part of the draping of the sari symbolized, you did it in a way that was almost beautiful. I particularly liked this sentence:
"Each pleat that you fold, holds you with a responsibility towards you and the ones around whom your life is centered."
I enjoyed this sentence because it is phrased in a very nice way, that makes you picture the folding of the pleats in your mind, and then effectively describes exactly what this process symbolizes in a memorable and elegant way. You do this throughout the entire piece.
The only criticism that I could have that it is very short, and that perhaps more detail could be given about exactly what the character is feeling during the sari draping process. For example how the fabric physically feels, and how this makes the character feel emotionally , not just their feelings before and after the process. However this is a very small criticism.
Overall, I enjoyed this very much and I thank you for writing it. xx