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Clothes And Color

3/9/2016

2 Comments

 
​My parents were educators in India; they were far from affluent. I never went without clothes, but I did not have fancy clothes. I could see what some of my classmates in school were wearing. I wanted to wear starchy white shirts and spotless white trousers. I also wanted colorful shirts, stylish dark trousers and shoes with shiny straps. I did not have them.
 
I was lucky to get a lucrative job when I came out of the university. I could not believe the amount of money I made at the end of each month. I could buy all the clothes I wanted and I did. I filled my wardrobe with all kinds of clothes that had caught my fancy.
Picture
​It was at that time that I met Dev, an engineer who also worked for the same company. He was only a few years older than me, but appeared, more for his demeanor than for his looks, much older. He was a quiet person, who spoke selectively, apparently on occasions that aroused him for some reason, and on those occasions he was precise and forthright.
 
Dev drew my attention in a meeting, where he was the last to speak but immediately got everybody to agree to a solution he proposed. He drew my attention later for a reason of another sort: he always wore white at work, and at other times invariably wore black, without exception. I asked him about this when I came to know him better.

Picture
​“I realized some time back,” he said, “that I could not pay attention to the few things I cared for – music, my health, watching and photographing birds, reading and understanding modern history – unless I withheld attention from dozens of other things in my life. I try to live simply, eat simply and dress simply. It was a part of the last that I chose to simplify my choice of clothes by selecting just two colors, black and white. I like these colors, but I also greatly like how simply I can now choose my clothes.”
 
I was tempted to ask if it wouldn’t be simpler to widen the range of colors and buy from a wider selection of clothes, but I held my breath. As the days passed, my instinctive opposition, even a little of resentment, slowly dissolved, and I began to ponder over his essential point that, to focus on what one considers important, one may have to place a couple of other things on a back burner.
 
I could never go back to my earlier interest in adding to my wardrobe. 

2 Comments
Kashyap Ray link
3/10/2016 19:59:18

Very well written ...
I think most people who are so so brand conscious about wearing good clothes have nothing to really talk about but just show off...

Reply
Manish
3/13/2016 23:25:18

Thank you, Kashyap, for your kind remark. When we pay a lot of attention to clothes, perhaps we sometimes overlook the real person inside them.

Reply



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    Manish Nandy

    Writer, Speaker, Consultant
    Earlier: Diplomat, Executive


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