What is a Blouse Piece

In India, a blouse is a cloth thats worn inside a saree. It is supposed to cover the chest and some part of the shoulders and arms ( apparently the only way fashion designers can introduce any sort of fashion in this thing called saree is by setting arbitrarily varying lengths for the blouse in the arm region and introduce doors, windows plus some peep holes on the back and arms - thankfully!!). Of late northern influences in design elements have been found ( gagro choli) with their array of beads, sea shells ( yes the same pallanguzhi sozhi), mirrors and an entire range of amateur scout knots....Its a very important accesorry and fashion statement and chief ministers have election manifestos covering them. Stupid Serials are sold with TRA ratings going up with people speculating on the blouses worn by the comperers....

A blouse piece is a raw piece of cloth that is unstitched. Women take this piece of cloth and stich it to their respective sizes.

Buying a matching blouse piece?

Its eve's curse on man - final stone to break your back - after going through the naraga vedhanai of assiting your better half in buying a saree - if you have the misfortune of ending up on the southern Side of Panagal Park/Usman Road/Durai Sami road Junction - to the uninitated it will quite a site - do not be misled - its not the chief minister distributing flood relief - but people actually queing up to get inside saree and GOLD shops. GOlD man - the metal - get inside thanga malaigai after doing all possible asanas in finding a parking space, having to control your better half from zeroing on like a bee to a flowerbed - to get the attention of the sales guy - who looks and feels like he is the guy distributing puliyodarai prasadam at kabali koil - and you with utmost devotion seek his benevolent help in find the most audacious looking ornament ( god knows how one kammal or changili SUITS you better) - you have done all that and almost killed the sare shop attendant ( he would give good competition to paramatma ( aka NTR) in the vastra haranam scene - by being able to supply an endless stream of Ramar kalar, Kaapi kalar - mayil kalar -double border, single border - same border, attached border - and if by any further misfortune its not an attached border - you now have to go through this entire order ( like getting caught near the top in a snakes mouth in paramapadam - go down to the blouse shop).

Here the guy throws another deluge of cloth ( similar to the more color button on your paintshop pallette) - the worst thing is that no matter how many permutation combinations you work on - chances are that the first three shops will not have th exact same shade ( yet its no longer color -its shade - means you need to analyse the cloth under shop light and then go out into sun light). Finally if you are lucky and god thinks you have sufferred enough for the day, you better half sulks herself into settling with something that is somewhat matching -man you have lived to fight another day...

So What IS the deal with the Blouse piece?

Now in India we have something called "Ladies Sentiments" ( All plural even if it just refers to 1 lady and 1 sentiment). When women in India visit houses of other women, a blouse piece is given as a gift to the guest before she leaves. I have no idea why of all things it was decided that a blouse piece would be gifted to visiting guests. Lets say, there is a lady who is a complete stranger to the whole "Ladies Sentiments" thing and she visits someone's house in south India. How would she feel when the host gifts her and she opens the gift and find that its a blouse piece. What would she think? "Why this gift? Is there something wrong with the blouse I am wearing? Was it so bad that the host shuddered on looking my blouse and decided to jump out of the window buy a blouse piece and come and gift it to me?. Is the host being judgemental on me?"

What happens to these blouse pieces after they are gifted?

Now many caterpillars become butterflies, many boys become men. But the mutation of the blouse piece into an actual blouse is not that straightforward. The probability of a blouse piece becoming a blouse is 0.2. Thats right!! 2 out of every 10 blousepieces make it to the blouse level.
Think about Euros, Dollars, Rupees, Yen. Think about the CNBC advertisements where they show currency getting fastly printed and counted, people exchanging money rapidly in world business centers. You may not have heard of a currency called the blouse piece. This is the curency of south India. Statistics reveal that every minute of the day, 10 blouse pieces change hands. Women all over the world are travelling and exchanging blouse pieces rapidly.

When a blouse piece is receved as a gift, a lady decides what she has to do with it? If its of a color and material that she lacks at that moment, she will convert the blouse piece to an actual blouse (provided there are no further hitches in going and stitching it with a tailor).

But this conversion is very rare considering that fact that she has around 500 blouse pieces stocked in her cup board. This is the reason why the blouse piece remains a blouse piece for a long time. The life cycle of many blouse pieces are codemned. They stagnate as gift items for over 5 to 6 years until they are gifted to poor people or domestic maids. There again their chances of continuing as gifts are still bright.

This very moment thousands and thousands of blouse pieces are gifted and regifted. When time comes to a standstill and the yellow sun becomes a red dwarf star ( I think there is no supernova in this solar system and I debated for 5 seconds on whether our sun will becomes red dwarf or white dwarf), when all human beings have become extinct like dinosaurs and a new species begins to inhabit the earth. They will find thousands and thousands of unstitched blouse pieces lying around in the southern parts of the Indian subcontinent. Imagine what would they make of it.

If we judged dinosours based on fossils we found, what sort of judgement would they pass on human beings?