I stared at my clothes hanging in the hotel room closet and wondered if I had brought anything appropriate to wear to our first event in Bangalore. All I saw was black, white, gray and tan options. I've been living in New York for too long! I picked my fanciest black and white suit, put on my open toed heels and headed out.

Why was I suddenly having Wardrobe Doubt? Because I had just spent all day Sunday in a city where 90 percent of the women wear bright colored, beautifully patterned saris that seem to touch the ground at every step without getting dirty, that show a woman's figure and hide it at the same time and that make nearly every Indian woman look tall and elegant.

As a 5' 1" woman, I had to understand the secret of this elongating design!   I had tried one on at a shop on Sunday but I looked like the Statue of Liberty gone mad in yards and yards of bright blue silk. I must find out more.

Our event was the Global Symposium in India for Diversity Best Practices. We are so grateful to Cisco for hosting this important event in their elegant super high tech Bangalore headquarters. We brought together 65 diversity professionals from more than 20 companies to discuss best practices in diversity and inclusion work in India.

Tracy Ann Curtis, Chief Diversity Officer from Cisco APAc and India was our emcee and leader for the day. She is an effervescent woman originally from California who has made her home in Bangalore for 5 years. She really ramped up my Sari Envy by wearing a gorgeous hand painted sari so beautifully that I began to wish I knew how to wrap and fold those layers of cloth around my much shorter frame. So I asked her about it.

The Sari is one piece of rectangular fabric 6 meters long. One meter is cut off of the end to make a short sleeved midriff-length top to wear under the sari--this way it all matches. It takes 2-8 hours to get the top made at the sari shop so it is ready in one day. 

Every sari is the exact same dimensions. So every woman can wear every sari. If you are short you tuck in 4 inches of the fabric as you wrap it around your waist. If you are tall you tuck in less fabric. The trick to wrapping, folding and tucking is something I can't explain yet, but I will figure it out when I go to buy my own Sari.

The fabric is silk or cotton. Women from other countries buy silk saris, but the Indian women often buy cotton. They like the way it drapes.

All saris are colorful. The beauty of Bangalore is inseparable from the women who walk everywhere in their pink, yellow, green, blue, maroon and purple saris, some with big flower woven into the fabric and some with sparkles.    

While the women in Bangalore almost all wear some form of Indian traditional dress almost all the men wear western clothes. Sort of a Hagger's look. Cotton pants and buttoned long sleeve cotton shirts. No bright colors and nothing much to report. The men wore regular business suits for our event.

We had a wonderful day with our new friends. We explored generational differences in India, the impact of the caste system on D+I work, gender equity and many other important topics.

I didn't resolve my Sari Envy but I'll work on that another day.