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movement, but if you keep silent and allow me the way I am, I won't create a nuisance; otherwise there will be a movement. You will see bonfires, caps burning, in front of your office."
He looked at me and he said, "Okay, don't create any nuisance, just go on the way you are. But I will be in trouble because sooner or later others are going to ask, 'Why did you allow him?"'
I said, "The fact is that if you are an honest man, you should stop wearing the cap yourself, because you don't have any scientific grounds for it. Otherwise, whosoever comes, tell him to find scientific, fundamental reasons for it -- that in some way it helps intelligence. The college is meant to help people's intelligence; it should be sharpened. In what way does the cap help? It imprisons."
But he said, "At least buttons...."
I said, "I don't like them. I like the air going directly to my chest, I enjoy it; I don't like buttons. And nowhere in your college code is a cap mentioned, so for the cap I need scientific reasons. Nowhere is it mentioned that you have to have buttons." But nobody there had ever thought that people would come to college without buttons. I said, "You can see: I don't even have the holes for the buttons."
I won the first prize in my first year in an inter-university debate competition, and this principal was very happy. He said, "I knew that you would win because you find proofs and reasons which nobody even suspects exist. But now there is a problem: we need your photograph with the trophy and everything; it is going to be published. The cap I cannot say anything about, leave it; but buttons, without buttons.... The picture will be going to all the newspapers."
I said, "Then you can stand in my place, with buttons, proper dress and cap. I am not interested. And when I was debating I did not have buttons; I won the trophy without buttons. And in the photo I have to be without the buttons, otherwise you are not being fair. You should have told me there that without buttons I could not participate in the debate.
"You had chosen me to participate out of all the candidates in the college -- at that time also I had no buttons.
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