One of the lingering images I have of my three-year stint in the rural milieu of Salem in Tamil Nadu in the late 1960s, as a Lecturer in English teaching children of a predominantly agrarian community joining newly started government colleges, is the chance encounter with a young farmer with modern outlook and ancient dress sense.

My first port of call in Salem district was the Government College of Engineering, newly started in what then appeared to be a desolate village, Karuppur, with miles and miles of uninhabited terrain all around. Karuppur is now a sought after prime area in the middle of the burgeoning metropolis of Salem. 

When I joined the college, the only inhabited place in that never-never land was a tea shop just across the road, run by an enterprising Malayalee, serving tea and snacks to the college staff and students.

The ministerial staff member who took me around the campus on a familiarisation tour on the first day at the college also took me to the tea shop, saying that without it the students and staff would have a really very hard time in this outback.

As we sat on a bench and ordered tea, I looked around the shop and noticed a well-built, dark skinned youth with a towel tied around his head like a turban.

What struck me as odd was that he appeared to wear nothing else.

I dismissed him as an example of the very local variety of homo sapiens and continued to sip the hot tea served by the shop owner.

It was only when he stood up that I realized that he was wearing a very small loincloth, akin to what Malayalees call konakam, with its end piece jutting out at his rear like a tail.

But I got a strong and severe blow to my cultivated smugness from what the youth did next. He paid for his tea, went out, kick-started a brand new Royal Enfield 350CC motorbike with ‘For Registration’ board kept on the curb, and sped away. Sitting erect and holding his turbaned head high in all majesty.

Seeing the sense of utter disbelief so evident on my face, the shop owner told me the youth was a 'model farmer' of the village. He owned extensive agricultural lands, did farming on modern lines, had a tractor and a truck, and a shop at Salem for the sale of his produces. In spite of it all, he worked along with the many farmhands he employed, and he often came to the tea shop in his 'working clothes.'

That day I learnt a great lesson in life: Never judge a person by his dress. Or lack of it.

Image Courtesy: ChatGPT