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Updated: May 12, 2025
He was warmly dressed, considering that it was the middle of the hot weather, in an old cloth jacket and a coloured dhota, rather scanty but of thicker material than is usual in our part of India. He had long black hair, which he said had never been cut. He seemed rather proud of it, and often dressed it with a little comb.
I was amongst the earliest arrivals, and was received by the Inamdar and his son with all that graceful courtesy which no one knows better how to show than an Indian. The full dress of a Mohammedan is striking and effective. They never of course wear the dhota, which is the garment of Hindus, but they wear instead trousers, fitting very close at the foot, but of great width in the upper part.
The dhota, which takes the place of trousers amongst Hindus, is not really a particularly comely garment, and its loose folds are not at all convenient for working men, especially masons and carpenters, who have to climb about on scaffolds.
Yet, in spite of this outward conformity to the English model, he is still as completely an Indian, and as little of an Englishman, as when he wore his dhota, or even when he thought his loin-cloth sufficient clothing.
He takes off all his clothing except his dhota, and eats with his fingers in silence. Sociality at such a time is out of place; it diverts the mind from the business in hand, which is that of "filling the belly," as the Indian himself commonly expresses it. The women of the household never sit down to dinner with the rest of the family.
But no one could have supposed that there was any identity between the shabby Hindu, with shaved head and little pigtail and fluttering dhota, and that fine-looking fellow who first entered the carriage. On the railway. The unpunctual neighbour. Indians' opinions concerning punctuality. Christianity only a partial cure. Servants and punctuality. Indians' unpunctuality at meals.
Natives when they sleep, generally roll themselves up completely, head and all, in a dhota, which they use then after the manner of a sheet. The mosquito-nets cut off a good deal of air, and people are tempted to discard them unwisely when the nights are intensely hot. The framework from which the nets depend is a frail counterpart of the four-poster of the Victorian age.
They talk a little English, dropping back into the vernacular with some relief when unable to say exactly what they want in the foreign tongue. They rather incline to English dress; in some cases even substituting knickerbockers, or trousers, for the Hindu dhota. The picturesque and useful turban they unfortunately give up altogether, and wear instead a small round cap.
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