About dressing, there are two points of view.
One, how you dress reflects what you are, and two, dressing hides one's personality than reveals it.
Some over-dress like when a bank manager dresses as if she is at an evening party and some under-dress, trying to subdue their profile. There are workday clothes, there are evening apparels. And also, the just essentials in the privacy of the home.
Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia after the Assembly session in Delhi. PTI
Like corporate dressing – I am told London corporate executives just loosen the necktie and roll up the sleeves to mark the impending weekend from Friday afternoons. It is called Friday dressing.
Even in India, when consulates and embassies host parties, there is a request — the appropriate wear would be a business suit for men; ladies, in elegant outfits, which does not necessarily mean haute couture.
And these days, even politicians dress well.
In this context, during the live telecast of the debate on vote of confidence for the Aam Aadmi Party government in Delhi, when a minority government was supported by a diminished arch rival, the Congress, and berated by the single largest party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, we may have missed a point.
The BJP MLAs, some of them repeating their terms, tried to question the propriety of the AAP members wearing their white Gandhi caps with the party name inscribed on them and they promptly removed them.
What was striking was the statement the new members from AAP sought to make in the manner in which they had dressed for the all-important event. They came just the way they have been dressing during the street agitations — no less, no more.
Arvind Kejriwal had switched from his greyish blue full-sleeved sweater to a maroon one, and his grey muffler was missing, apparently because it was warmer indoors even in the terrible Delhi winter. Manish Sisodia had donned the same beige jacket which appeared much like a wind-cheater a biker would prefer. The usher or marshals were differently dressed in their dark bandhgalas.
They stood out, and when either of the two stood up, their backdrop was the well-heeled dressing of the officials in the officials' gallery. It was as if they had no time to outfit themselves with the clothes that politicians prefer moment they get to the centre stage, or are anywhere close to it. Or, in all probability, they were only quietly reinforcing the image of the common man dressed in the ordinary way. The second is more likely.
As Pradeep Chhibber and Rahul Verma pointed out in another context in the Indian Express, of the 28 of the AAP MLAs, 10 of them were the poorest among all the 70 who had convened to discuss the issue of confidence in the new government. They came dressed like people come for a housing society meeting of a Sunday.
Being a proclaimed party of the plebeians, AAP's MLAs — some had a bank balance of about Rs 20,000 and others not much more compared to what a traditional civic corporation member would have amassed even in one term — are people like us (PLUs) and they were defined by Kejriwal in his reply: the chaiwallah to the middle classes who want governance with probity.
Their dressing, a rung less than what many from among the middle classes would to attend a birthday party of a friend, was such a drastic change from the put-on of the entrenched political classes who, by their everyday work clothes itself, draw a distinction between them and us, between the venerable and the hoi polloi.
There has been this Indian de rigueur – for politicians: Starched khadi clothes, not the easiest to manage, were what met one's eye. There was no need to advertise who he or she was. Their dressing screams their status: a leader, and for the lesser among them, an aspirer for power.
As soon as a person is elected to an office, be it the municipal council or the parliament, the visit to a tailor is a must, ordering several of the attire. The khadi however is on the decline, including the once favourite Pondudru, mispronounced pondoor. It is a variety named after the place in Andhra's Srikakulam district; a very fine piece of khadi, and expensive to boot.
No doubt, even during the life and times of Mahatma Gandhi, perhaps the only most revered public figure who wore the least, the other leaders dressed well – look at the pictures of Nehru, Rajendra Babu, Azad. Then, of course, there were the jholiwala types who were completely inure to the need to dress well because what they were doing was more important than what they wore.
Perhaps then, not being able to afford elegant clothes of fine cuts could have been one important reason because politics did not lead to high rake-offs. The fee then for the sittings of Parliament would have hardly meant much for they were in it voluntarily unlike those who promote themselves in it as a family business.
Once both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha started telecasting live their proceedings, the tendency to improve how one dressed became a necessity because the people were watching and the members were performing. It was as mandatory to dress well as it was for the TV anchors to wear business suits. The TV brought in a new culture where a suit did not evoke a derisive 'suited-booted' comment.
However, the live telecast of the vote of confidence debate in the Delhi Assembly – whoever thought that one day people would be glued to the telecast of a state legislature? – indicated two varieties of people. Those who dressed well, because they were in politics for long, and those who dressed the way the ordinary man in Delhi does in winter.
No comments:
Post a Comment