If the gharara is here, can the Bhopali be far behind?

It's because, my style icon, Shabana Azmi, Instagrammed herself in a gorgeous farshi gharara (and put to rest all doubts about its length and width by saying, 'The authentic classic gharara! Here’s My 2 bits worth... It needs to be free flowing on the thigh NOT tight. The joint must be 4 inches above the knee where the gota is put.'). It's because of a warm memory of the bachpan ka jamuni gharara that Khan auntie stitched and recently, one that Kahkashan had worn with aplomb to our school-group lunch; Archana to a Diwali party and the girl on Diwali and on Tiya's Haldi, that I am thinking of the Bhopali.

Also, my other beti, Saman was quoted on page3.

Arre, ek Bhopali nahi leke jaogi? Ek Bhopali joda to hona chahiye! Sameena looked at my wedding trousseau with dismay and then in her dramatic style began to tell me how at a recent wedding, some celebrity was wearing one – how the six-meter dupatta must go over the left shoulder to touch the heel of the right foot and the other end rest ‘lightly’ on the right arm. 
Imagining myself swathed in gossamer chiffon and brocade, we made our way through the crowded Chowk in Sheher (city market). The shopfronts on either side of the meandering lanes were stacked with bales and bales of silks, satins, velvets, brocades and soft muls that I couldn’t take my eyes off. But Sameena marched purposefully ahead, dragging me by the arm, saying not here, not here, every time I stopped to rest my eyes on some exquisite piece.

We finally came to a stop at a shop the size of a paan-shop. Chiffon (she asked for a specific variety) dikaiye, purple mein. In two seconds, she had decided and informed me, ye lenge. Then, she asked for brocade to go with it and the shopkeeper showed a few keeping the jamuni chiffon against those. She picked one – ye dijiye. At the kinnari wala next, even before I could feast my eyes on the mind-boggling variety of gota trims – edged with sequins and folded into phool-pattis, she picked a gota kinnari with yellow thread, and she informed me, ye best hai.  
The material got, we now walked through the galis of Ginnori to arrive at an aged wooden door embedded in a vast expanse of wall. She rapped the chain bolt loudly on the door and a teenaged girl opened it to let us inside. In the vast courtyard before us, several women were busy with chores and children ran weaving their way around adults, cots, buckets full of water, tubs full of washing, a matka here and a surahi there. The entire scene before us came to a standstill for a few seconds as everyone sensed visitors; a reed chick was lifted a crack with a cane stick for someone to peek at us from a darkened room. Quickly the interruption was acknowledged and the little girl twisting a curtain into a tight rope, put her legs around it and let it go, the two scallops of her shalwar touching the floor, she was swung in a slow whirl and the entire scene came alive again. Sameena hain, a woman remarked and a few of them greeted her cheerily and asked her family’s khair.
Sameena called out to a ‘Baaji’ and a lady in the far corner lifted her eyes from her sewing to look at us. ‘Inka Bhopali banana hai, samaan iss mein hai,’ she said and handed our shopping to a young girl in a short mul kurta and churidar. They shared some pleasantries and we came out.
But measurements? I asked her, surprised. Arre, she saw you, na? Sami replied.
The entire scene still plays vividly in my mind’s eye almost three decades after I left Bhopal. Every year, during spring cleaning, I take out my Bhopali joda and marvel at each neat pleat handstitched in place, every bit of the gota tacked beautifully, the six-metre dupatta chuna-hua (crinkled) by hand…