By Roopa Basu
In 2025, while visiting the 18th century temple at Degaldoruwa in Sri Lanka, a monk pointed out something in one of the temple murals that I would almost certainly have missed on my own.
Among the figures was a woman whose saree was draped differently. He explained that the way she wore it showed that she was a woman from India. Like me, he said with a smile.
That tiny detail stayed with me. One length of cloth, but the way it is woven, worn, folded or draped can tell you something about where someone comes from. For a South Asian Heritage Month project themed around Unity in Diversity, it felt like the perfect place to begin.
Saree Stories became a series of free, creative workshops across Wandsworth, using the saree as a starting point for conversations about family, memory, migration, culture and belonging. Each session began with a storyteller sharing a personal connection to sarees, before everyone made their own mini sarees through colour, pattern, collage and embellishment. You didn’t need to know anything about sarees, or be particularly confident about making, to dive right in!
I wanted some visual prompts to accompany the sessions. And I made the mistake of thinking I could also produce a brief introduction to the saree in a tiny concertina zine.
Every question opened another door: ancient, draped cloth, regional weaves, working sarees, and more ways of wearing one piece of cloth than I could sensibly fit into anything pocket-sized.
So the zine quickly stopped pretending to be a history of the saree. Instead, it became a small collection of folds, facts and fragments.
That became the spirit of the workshops too.
I wasn’t interested in presenting the saree as one neat story, because there isn’t one. Instead, I wanted to create a space where people could encounter different histories and then bring their own memories, questions and experiences into the room.
And most importantly, I wanted to begin each workshop with a ‘saree storyteller’.
Heroine: Navsari, Nakuru and new beginnings in Battersea
Our first Saree Stories workshop took place at Kambala Creative Health and Wellbeing Centre, where our first storyteller was the wonderful Heroine, aged 82.
Born into a Parsi family in Gujarat, Heroine’s story travelled from Gandevi and Navsari to Mombasa, Nairobi and Nakuru, and eventually to Battersea.
She spoke about arriving in London, learning English, working first in a leather factory in Fulham and later as a typist and receptionist at the Central Bank of India, before eventually buying her own flat in Battersea.
And then there were the sarees.
One in particular seemed to contain a whole geography of its own: fabric bought in Hong Kong, embroidery completed in Bombay, and the finished saree worn to a wedding in London.
After Heroine spoke, the room filled with colour, conversation and mini sarees. People cut, drew, patterned, embellished, helped each other and occasionally abandoned whatever they had originally planned because someone else at the table had just had a much better idea.
It was exactly the sort of gentle creative space I had hoped Saree Stories might become.
One saree, several generations
At our workshop on the Alton Estate at Focus Hall, we were joined by three storytellers: Suchi, Madhu Aunty and Jayanthi.
Suchi brought stories from Kolkata and Bengal, along with the light, airy cotton handlooms championed by her mother. She brought with her sarees, adorned with some very local motifs like bengal’s beloved fish. Her family photographs opened up conversations about dress, family and the small practical knowledge around sarees that is often simply passed from one person to another.
Madhu Aunty and her daughter Jayanthi brought extraordinary heirloom sarees from their Kashmiri family.
One was a silk saree more than 100 years old, still carrying its original real silver zari border.
Another was a checked, handwoven saree, also around a century old. Madhu Aunty explained that her mother-in-law had had it specially made before Indian Independence, inspired by the checked fabrics and fashions she encountered at social gatherings with European families.
I loved this one. A bit of fashion, history and cultural exchange, all folded into one cloth.
Their stories also reminded us that treasured sarees were not necessarily preserved untouched forever. Older sarees had been cut up and transformed into dresses, bags and keepsakes. And now another generation was entering the story, with Jayanthi’s daughter beginning to wear sarees herself.
Like these weren’t special enough, Asma brought along a saree clad doll that almost served as a mascot for the session!
The conversation wandered freely, as the best conversations do.
We discussed five-yard and nine-yard sarees, weddings, festivals, fabrics and regional traditions.
And then came the question that cut through all of this heritage magnificence:
How do you wash them?
A very good question.
There was considerable amusement when we started talking about the role of the dhobi, and the entirely normal experience in parts of South Asia of somebody arriving at your doorstep to collect the family washing.
Heritage, yes. Silver zari, absolutely. But eventually somebody has to deal with the laundry.
Sheema, her mother and another Wandsworth
Our final workshop took place at Sound Minds, where we were joined by Sheema Huq, a writer and poet of Bangladeshi heritage. We were at their Bridging Minds session (supported by Culturally Mindful legacy programme)
Sheema spoke about her late mother and the changing place sarees held throughout her life.
Sheema described her mother as someone who favoured practicality over aesthetics in later life, shaped partly by a tight household budget and by the demands of factory and home sewing work.
What particularly caught my attention was Sheema’s memory of growing up in Wandsworth and regularly seeing South Asian women walking around in sarees.
I find that surprisingly difficult to picture now.
I went looking for images of that particular Wandsworth history online and found very little, so for the workshop I brought in photographs of South Asian women in London during the 1980s, including striking images of women in sarees taking part in activism and protest.
They generated a lot of conversation.
Suddenly the saree was not simply being discussed as occasion wear or family inheritance. Here it was in public life, on London streets, worn by women organising, marching and making themselves heard.
A rather different London came into the room.
Sheema brought a Rajshahi saree from Bangladesh, while I brought a block-printed saree, so we could look closely at the differences in cloth, surface, pattern and process.
Whether through a photograph, an heirloom saree, a pattern or a family memory, these little points of entry did what I hoped they would do. They started conversations.
Then everybody made.
And made.
There were mini sarees everywhere.
Making your own mini saree
The creative activity itself was deliberately simple.
Participants were given a mini-saree sized piece of fabric and a table full of colour, pattern, collage and embellishment materials. There was no right way to make one and no expectation of prior knowledge or artistic experience.
Some people worked meticulously.
Some worked quickly.
Some planned.
Some changed their minds halfway through.
People borrowed ideas, compared colours, helped neighbours and told stories while their hands were busy.
And the finished pieces were all completely different.
For a project based around Unity in Diversity, I’m not sure I could have designed a better visual metaphor if I had tried: the same basic piece of cloth, interpreted again and again in entirely individual ways.
The storyteller element changed the workshops completely. Rather than beginning with an abstract idea of “heritage”, we began with somebody saying: this is what this cloth meant in my life.
From there, everybody else had somewhere to enter.
You didn’t need to know anything about sarees. You could come in through colour, pattern, family, memory, curiosity. Or simply because making a tiny saree looked like fun!
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Saree Stories was created for South Asian Heritage Month 2026 and delivered across Wandsworth at Kambala Creative Health and Wellbeing Centre, Focus Hall on the Alton Estate and Sound Minds.
Huge thanks to all our storytellers — Heroine, Suchi, Madhu Aunty, Jayanti and Sheema — and to everyone who came, talked, made, shared and helped fill the workshops with stories.
Thank you also to Kambala Creative Health and Wellbeing Centre, Sandra Muñoz, SW15 Women’s Network, Sound Minds and Angel, and to everyone who helped host and support the sessions.
With thanks to South Asian Heritage Month, Welcome to Wandsworth, Wandsworth Council and The National Lottery Heritage Fund for supporting the project.
