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us notorious also with you:'Look at the poor child!' Everybody will think that we are not giving you clothes."
Since they had stopped, by the time I passed matriculation I dropped that dress. As I left the town I changed my dress to be more suited to my college life. I had found that in the first college I went to, the cap was compulsory -- you could not come without a cap. That was a great idea. You have to come very properly dressed: shoes, buttons closed, with a cap. I went there with no buttons, with no cap, with my wooden sandals -- and immediately I became a celebrity.
The principal immediately called me. He said, "What is this?"
I said, "This is just a way to get introduced to you, otherwise it may take years. Who bothers about a first-year student?"
He said, "You have some idea behind it, but it is not allowed; you will have to wear a cap, and buttons have to be closed."
I said, "You will have to prove to me what the scientific grounds are for wearing a cap. Does it help in any way to increase your intelligence? Then I can even use a turban -- why a cap? -- if it increases your brain power. But the fact is that the most idiots in India are in Punjab, and they use a turban, tied tightly. Perhaps they are the only people in the whole world who use the turban so tightly; their mind is completely imprisoned, finished. And the most intelligent people in India are the Bengalis, who don't use caps." I said, "You just tell me what are the fundamental, scientific reasons that I have to wear a cap."
He said, "This is strange -- nobody ever asked the fundamental, scientific reasons about caps. This is simply our convention in this college."
I said, "I don't bother about convention. If the convention is unscientific and destroys people's intelligence, I am the first to rebel against it. And soon you will see caps disappearing from the college because I am going to tell people,'Look -- Bengalis have the best intelligence and they don't use caps.'
"In India, two Nobel prizes have gone to Bengal. To Punjab, I don't think ever in the future there is going to be a single Nobel prize. I am going to spread this movement,
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