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Where's the pavada?
IF THE songs, `Pavada prayathil' and `Pavadai davaniyil', were to be accounting today, the lyrics would not be the same.
For, the pavada has about vanished from the Malayali girl's wardrobe.
This pleated acceptable dress has been replaced by jeans, trousers, salwar kurtas, midis and skirts.
In Kerala, alone the `bold' wore the salwar kurta two decades ago. And again came the aggression of the cyberbanking media and salwar kurtas begin their way into the hearts of Malayali girls.
If you appetite to see Malayali girls in pattu pavada-blouse sets today, again you accept to be arrive to a wedding. Or you should appointment a temple or delay for November 1 (Kerala Piravi Day).
The pavada has its western counterpart: the skirt. What had flowed bottomward over the ankles during the Victorian era has, over the years, acclimatized itself to the midi, the mini and the micro skirts, all of progressively abbreviating length. Micros and minis may be the acerbity in Indian metros, but Thiruvananthapuram is yet to bolt up with this trend.
Traditionalists, however, charge not worry. A few still adopt the pavada. "I abrasion jeans, skirts and salwar kurtas to college," says Saumya, a apprentice of Engineering "But I do abrasion pavada and half-sari (davani) occasionally. I afresh got a pavada stitched. But it's unrealistic to anticipate that pavada will be beat as it acclimated to be 15 to 20 years ago. But things accept bigger from the way it was bristles years ago, back the pavada or the bisected sari was hardly seen."
On a whim, Saumya's mother bought her a Kancheevaram pavada recently.
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"Wearing pavada and blouse to academy is actual afflictive and inconvenient. Getting on and off buses, in abundant pavada, is actual difficult. It is a adorning outfit, and not a anatomic one. Hence, it is best to abrasion it on baddest occasions. I buy it alone already a year, during Onam, and that's the alone time I abrasion it; that is, if there are no marriages to attend," says Siddhi Devi, a B.Com apprentice .
She prefers jeans and salwar kurta, as they are "very acceptable to wear". But she is quick to add, "This does not beggarly I animosity pavada and blouse."
Even mothers don't appetite to force the pavada on their daughters. Says Usha, mother of 14-year-old Sharada, who studies in Holy Angels Convent, "Of course, the pavada is actual admirable and traditional, but I don't bulldoze my babe to abrasion it. And it is not like she never wears the pavada. We get her one for Onam, weddings or added occasions. At times, she herself demands that she wants to abrasion it to some function."
Cisy Vinod too does not force her daughters to abrasion the pavada. "These days, girls accept able angle about annihilation beneath the sun. Try cogent them what they should wear, and you will know," she says.
Sharada disgarees with the appearance that the pavada is "uncomfortable". "I acquisition the dress actual convenient. It's a change from the approved clothes such as jeans, skirts and salwars we wear. But it is absolutely not a acceptable abstraction to abrasion it on all canicule of a month."
Mothers, however, would adulation to see their daughters abrasion the pavada-blouse frequently. "It gives a assertive aristocratic attending to the teenager. I adulation the dress. But there is no way I can get my babe to abrasion it often. Just as the sari has displaced the mundum neriaythum, salwar kurtas accept replaced the pavada - blouse," says Lekha Nair, mother of a 20-year-old who hates the pavada-blouse.
Pavada generally agency the pattu pavada, stitched in agleam Kancheevaram. "I can't anticipate of the pavada in any added material. The adornment is allotment of the appearance account it makes," says Divya Gopakumar, a Class X apprentice .
But not anybody agrees. "Pavadas in printed georgette or added constructed fabrics, which fabricated acceptable academic as able-bodied as accidental wear, were accepted a decade ago," says Lakshmi, a housewife.
Some girls animosity the pavada because it is "revealing". "With salwar kurta, I can abrasion a dupatta. But what do I do with a pavada-blouse set? Alike a bisected sari is revealing," argues Smitha, a amount apprentice at Government Women's College.
["400px"]"I beg to differ," Divya says. "By the way you abrasion it, you can accomplish alike the best appropriate dress attending revealing. It is a catechism of aftertaste and choice. Booty the case of saree. Altered ancestors accept beat it in altered styles. Does Urmila Matdonkar abrasion the saree the way Nutan did?"
Some girls say that the pavada-blouse attracts exceptionable attention. "In a sea of college-going girls in salwar kurtas, you are a speck. But in pavada and blouse, you are the cynosure of all eyes. I like the dress, but not the absorption of the bounded Romeos," says R. Shirin of the Academy of Engineering.
As far as bathrobe is concerned, Hindi films and TV channels are the textbooks for youngsters. "If the Raveena Tandons, Shilpa Shettys and Rani Mukherjees do not abrasion the pavada (they may not accept alike heard of this dress!), will our girls do?" asks Revathy, a housewife. "Even Malayalam films accept few heroines clad in pavada."
At some point, the pavada did become the apparel of the not-so-modern heroine, the apple belle. But alike in this case, it was a altered adaptation of the pavada -- a cantankerous amid the arctic Indian ghagra/lehenga and our acceptable pavada.
"But for song sequences, the pavada will not alike amount in the set of apparel for Malayalam films," Revathy says. "What prevents our apparel designers from application this accouterments creatively? Our actresses, of course, attending acceptable in the pavada."
Aishwarya Rai and Sreedevi wore it in `Kandukonden Kandukonden' and `Devaragam' respectively. "And they looked gorgeous," Revathy adds.
Many teenaged anchors on Malayalam TV channels abrasion the pavada-blouse. Rimi Tomy, ballast and singer, generally advisers the combo.
Designer Sheela James is astute back she says, "We cannot apprehend the pavada to accomplish a comeback. To the avant-garde girl, it is a academic dress."
One aspect that works to the advantage of the pavada is that it can be acclimatized and improvised to clothing the wearer's taste. "This encourages adolescent women to analysis it out," says James.
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"The girls are agog on abacus avant-garde elements to the acceptable design. That is, they appetite the bisected sari to be abstract or the blouse to be embellished," says Indu Radhakrishnan .
Both the designers accede that the pavada has become a costume, about a `uniform' for specific occasions.
Going in for salwar kurtas makes complete bread-and-butter sense. They amount beneath than the acceptable pavada-blouse. With the appeal for salwar kurtas activity up, the aberration in prices is apprenticed to grow.
But for girls like Kanchana of University College, Kariavattom, the pavada would abandon absolutely from our campus. "I am so addicted of the dress that I never absence an befalling to abrasion it. There's commodity acceptable and admirable about the dress. It seems to backpack the spirit of our culture."
Giving Kanchana aggregation are five-year-old Shruti and seven-year-old Nivedita. The kids adulation pavadayum blousum, kuppi vala (glass bangles) and mulla poovu (jasmine). So, booty heart, traditionalists. All is not lost.
SHILPA NAIR
Graphics: Manoj
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