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.