The Checked Lungi

Whenever I visit my parents these days, I stay in the bedroom at the back of their house in Bangalore—the one where the distressing whine of the ceiling fan makes even the tubelight hum in sympathy. I sleep with the windows open which sometimes brings in a few mosquitoes and one time, a black cat, that calmly sat at my feet and looked at me and said nothing. 

If you've ever heard a noise that is more maddening than the tenacious drone of a solo mosquito resuming its sortie above your ear, less than a minute after you have vigorously slapped yourself in a fruitless attempt to nail the impetuous bastard, do let me know. I may have an award for you.

These visits are also the only times I wear the green checked lungi. This wonderful garment sits in the wooden cupboard awaiting my arrival each time, wraps me in its embrace for a few days, then gets washed and stays folded until my next visit. I don't remember when I got the lungi, but it certainly lived with me during my years at IIT, accompanying me down the hallway to visit the mess or the bathroom—depending on my yearning—or perhaps even venturing a bit further afield on a coffee or cigarette run to Tarams.

During my childhood, we visited Kerala each year, which is where I must have picked up the lungi practice. All my cousins wore them, but I never acquired their mastery of the tie. Theirs would stay intact even when tugged, whereas mine was always eager to give up its mission and reveal the very secrets it was deployed to shield. This was most terrible for my cricket game because on that rare occasion when I managed to connect bat to ball and set off for a run, lungi and owner would invariably read the game differently, resulting in a predictable runout. The cousins ran unimpeded, like male rabbits chasing their girls.

You couldn't say that a lungi isn't versatile. You can wear it in open mode as a flat cloth wound around your waist, or in tube mode where the ends are hemmed together allowing you to step in, like a boxer into a ring. You could wear it straight down like a flowing sarong, or you could double it up at the knee and put up something akin to a kilt without pleats.

My hostel neighbor Anil was the lungi pro. He wore it double—or at "half mast"—and the fascinating part was how he got it there. A leg would kick up from behind, pick up the end of the lungi and convey it to a waiting hand that would then orchestrate with its twin to fashion a knot and tuck it in, with no sweat or loss of rhythm. On a good day, he might even have gotten a couple more clues on the crossword he was pondering from the newspaper between his teeth, even as the operation was underway. 

The whole maneuver was accomplished in full stride with no loss of continuity, not unlike an aerial refueling operation where important stuff gets done even as both airplanes continue to fly unabated. Anil didn't play much cricket, but I'm guessing that he could easily have tucked his bat under his arm and pulled this off in the middle of a run.

I, on the other hand, had to work hard to achieve the kilt. First, I would have to be completely stationary, alert, and at least one Covid distance away from anyone else, before I could build up sufficient confidence for the impending maneuver. Then, I would carefully pick up the bottom end with my hands to double it up at the knee. But just as my arms would feebly coordinate to put up the second knot, the first would give way and the whole contraption would descend down to expose secrets that had long ceased to be.

OK, now sing with me:

All the Rajini fans... lungi dance, lungi dance...