Wrap for the new age
The Hindu
The traditional South Indian lungi needs a bit of glamourisation to draw the younger generation to it
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.
Around 440 MBBS graduates of 2021 are not required to undergo one year of compulsory rural service as per the bond signed by them while joining the medical course through government-quota seats in 2015 as the High Court of Karnataka has said the law, enacted in 2012 for mandatory rural service, remained unenforced for 10 years as it was published in the official gazette only in July 2022.