WHITE SHIRT SARTORIALIST

No, he is not into bright colours. Popcorn and cotton candy seller Satish Chand is fussy about his workday dresses. He is particularly partial towards white. “This is the colour for me, I find shanti (peace) looking at white... it is so soothing.”

This afternoon while walking about the tree-lined back-lanes of Gurugram’s sector 14, Mr Chand is attired in a white shirt that looks completely austere but on a closer inspection reveals faint outlines of white floral patterns etched along the sleeves.

He got the shirt sewn a year ago at home in Shahjahanpur district in UP. In his early 30s, Mr Chand lives alone in Gurugram’s Sukhrali village; his earnings support his family in UP. The gentleman always shops for clothes in his native village. He doesn’t trust the garment stores in Gurugram. Plus, “I never wear ready-made clothes and the tailor in my village has been making my pant-shirt for many years.”

Mr Chand realises that wearing white in a smoggy city like ours defies reason. “My shirt collar gets ganda (dirty) minutes after I walk out of my room,” he confesses.

As a rule, he wears the same set of pant-shirt for two days straight after which “I wash them at night” and uses another set for the next two days. He has three pairs of shirts and pants; all the shirts are in white including “some pants too.”

And yet, despite his reservations about the bright colours, this man is right now wearing a sleeveless sweater that’s as much of a shiny pink as the cotton candy he is hawking. Mr Chand instantly blushes. He smiles and affectionately runs his fingers upon the sweater, revealing that “this sweater was knitted by Reena, my wife.”