My in-laws are truly spectacular people. For every holiday, we get a box full of nifty/weird stuff, and on occasion these boxes come without a holiday.

The box that came to the office yesterday was for Halloween, and was as large as Christmas boxes have been in the past. It was glorious. It contained several bags of Halloween candy, including (but not limited to) Tootsie Rolls, Goetze’s Caramels, these weird New Moon-themed chocolates (which are kind of creepy), York Peppermint Batties (tee hee), cocoa almonds; a DVD of The Pit and the Pendulum; eight VHS tapes of The Incredible Mr. Wong (starring Boris Karloff); Halloween ornaments; best of all, a bag full of secondhand Indian clothing from the father-in-law’s coworker.

Oh, yeah. Second-hand Indian clothing. Two salwar suits and two saris. One salwar suit is a sort of mauvey grey kameez and coral-colored salwar and dupatta, and the other is gigantic, cotton, and a beige-y floral (its dupatta will most likely become part of my SCA kit). The saris are glorious. The first is like a 1970s prom dress. Seriously. It is peach, gauzy, and trimmed with cabuchon-style rhinestones (plastic ones). It’s kind of like this:

(from the Sydneys Vintage Clothing website)

Only as a sari. It has a matching choli. I feel an overwhelming need to figure out a place to wear it in public.

The above photos was as close as I could come to an example; nothing I found on the internet quite captures the sari’s essence. This dress is at least all once color (sort of); the sari’s rhinestones are white and green and red and yellow and set in more peach thread embroidery.

The other is lime green chiffon, with zari borders. It also has a matching choli, which fits me nicely, and a matching petticoat. I will certainly find a place to wear it.

And all in all, although some of the items are… interesting, I am thrilled with all of them because, as I told my husband, “I never would’ve bought any of this for myself!” Well, except for that green sari. The green sari is really quite lovely.

I promise to post photos just as soon as I take them.