In the 1980s, whenever I visited my grandma’s home at Triplicane in Chennai, I admired the way my four uncles wore the lungi. Typically like Rajinikanth in the movies, kicking the left leg back and holding the hem of the lungi with the left hand.
Watching them doing it, I longed to wear one some day and strut around like a proud peacock. But it was not until my eighth standard that my strict dad allowed me to buy one.
It took me an hour to wear it perfectly as it kept slipping from my hip. So I dared not go out lest it become an embarrassment. After a week of practice, I stepped out of my home in Shivaji Nagar, Bangalore (now Bengaluru). I stopped by a couple of friend’s homes calling them out under some pretext just to reveal my colourful checked lungi.
But it was not long before I began to sweat as it started to come loose. I leaned with my back onto the building wall to hold the lungi and prevent it from slipping down. Then carefully, I wrapped it tightly like grandma does with her surukkai pai , a small cloth wallet in which she kept areca nut and betel leaves besides small change. Phew! It was a narrow escape. Most important, none of my friends witnessed it.
In my teens, when I moved to Chennai, my eyes fell on shorts and jeans. And the lungi faded away in the corner of my cupboard.
It resurfaced during the pandemic, as I went back to my favourite lungi inspired by Anand Mahindra’s lungi and formal shirt workwear.
The traditional South Indian lungi needs a bit of glamourisation to draw the younger generation to it. Perhaps, get Virat Kohli to wear one or the Chennai Super Kings to use it as the official dress during IPL. It will be fun to watch the Australians wear it.
A lungi takes away all your worries about sitting on the thinnai (a cemented platform outside traditional homes for people to sit and socialise) or in a roadside tea shop bench. It also lends itself to a variety of ways to drape it — half-folding of each side to the front or flapping one side onto the front like a traditional veshti (a traditional men's wear that is wrapped around the waist).
I am a huge lungi fan and go on about why all Indians should wear one but for now I think I need to tighten mine a bit.
