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go to meet the collector, and the man, the peon, guarding the gate would just look at me and he would tell me, "Come on." Seeing that dress.... He would not have allowed me, a small boy, to enter, but, "With this dress he must be a sheik or somebody very important." And even the collector would stand up, seeing my dress. "Sheik" is used for very respectable people, and he would say, "Sheikji, betye -- Sheikji, please sit down."
I told my father, "This dress helps me in so many ways. Just the other day I went to see a minister and he also thought that I am a sheik belonging to some rich Arabian family or Persian family. And you want me to drop this dress and just use a dhoti and kurtha which nobody is going to notice?" I continued to wear that dress up to my matriculation.
They tried hard to stop me, but the harder they tried, the more.... I said, "If you stop trying perhaps I may drop it; while you continue to try I am the last person to drop it."
One day my father put all my salvars and my kurthas and my three Turkish caps in a bundle and went into the godown, the basement, and put them there somewhere where many kinds of things were broken, useless. I could not find anything, so when I came out of the bathroom I simply went naked, with my eyes closed into the shop. As I was going out my father said, "Wait! Just come in. Take your clothes."
I said, "You bring them, wherever they are."
He said, "I had never thought you would do this. I thought you would look around and search for the clothes; and you would not find them because I had put them in such a place you wouldn't find them. Then naturally you would wear the normal clothes that you are supposed to wear. I never thought that this would be your action."
I said, "I take direct action. I don't believe in unnecessary talk; I didn't even ask anybody where my clothes were. Why should I ask? My nakedness will serve the same purpose."
He said, "You have your clothes, and nobody is going to bother you about your clothes, but please, don't start walking naked because that will create more trouble -- that a cloth-merchant's son has no clothes to wear. You are notorious
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