THE PEOPLE

DRESS

The Hindu way of dress in this district is common with that followed in the adjacent districts of Pune and Nasik. Now-a-days, the European pattern is followed by many office-goers and college-students. However, many items of dress current among the people are indigenously evolved.

The sewn garment for the baby is balut consisting of a triangular piece of cloth tied round its waist so as to cover the buttocks and the front. The other garment is a topre which is a cap covering the ears and kunchi which is a cap and frock sewn together. Angi is a general term indicating a sewn garment for the upper body in which could be included jhable, bandi, or peti worn by the child. When the child grows two or three years old, a round or folded cap for the head, sadra or pairan for the upper part, chaddi or short pants for the lower parts are sewn for the use of boys and jhaga or frock are sewn for the use of girls.

The ordinary dress for the upper class Hindu in-doors is a dhoti and a sadra. Out-of-doors it consists of a head-dress which may be a folded cap of cotton, wool or silk fabric or a freshly-folded turban known as rumal, patka or pheta. The pre-formed turban known as pagadi is now to be rarely seen, a jacket known as bandi which may be used over a shirt or sadra; a coat, a short one after the European style or a long one (dagla); a shoulder cloth or uparane specially woven or of a light muslin cloth about three yards long by a yard broad, thrown round the shoulders. The wear of uparane has, of late, almost disappeared among the urbanites. This is the dress of Brahmans and similarly advanced people. Once a special Nagari or Pune shoes were used but now chappals and slippers have come into vogue.

Educated urbanites have been, of late, using all items of western dress and very lately the " bushcoat" or " bush-shirt". In-doors, they use striped or white pyjamas and half shirts. Their out-door dress varies between three types: (1) A lenga (loose trousers) and a long sadra, usually called Nehru shirt or a pair of short pants and a shirt, the flaps of the shirt either being allowed to hang loose on the short or tucked inside them. (2) A pair of trousers in combination with a shirt or a half-shirt; the sleeve of the shirt may be rolled in a band above the elbow. (3) A full western suit including trousers, shirt, perhaps a waist-coat and a necktie. For ceremonial occasions, he may prefer to dress in the Indian style in a spacious-looking long coat, called achkan and chudidar pijama or survar slightly gathered at the ankles with horizontal folds. A folded woollen or silk cap and a chadhav or pump shoe completes the ensemble. Among the urbanite young people, the dhotar has practically gone out of fashion. It is in some evidence among the middle-aged and the old. The shendi or scalp-lock has long been discarded by most and they cut their hair short in the western style. Shoes and boots are now being used even in-doors and the fashion of going about bare-headed everywhere has also stabilised.

The dress of the ordinary cultivators and villagers consists of a dhotar or loin-cloth, another cloth thrown over the shoulders and upper part of the body which except for this is often bare. There is a third rough cloth wound loosely round the head like a turban. All these are originally white but soon assume a dingy colour. The every-day attire of a cultivator is thus very simple but on special occasions, it consists of a red turban or a mundase or a freshly-folded turban, a coloured or white coat and a white dhotar. The coat known as Angarkha reaches the knee with flaps folding over the breast and tied with strings is now out of fashion and a short coat has come much into vogue. In the cold weather, warm clothing is used by all who can afford it.

Though among Hindus, there is no special holiday-dress on festivals or on days of family rejoicings, all who can afford it, put on richer or better clothes like silken garments. In the cold season, a well-to-do Hindu may use woollen jersies and wrap a shawl around him. A cultivator or an artisan is content with a coarse blanket called ghongadi. Of late a Nehru shirt with or without a kabja or jacket and a Gandhi cap is also the dress of many, particularly out-of-doors.

A Hindu woman's dress is the full Maratha sadi of nine yards and a short-sleeved choli covering only about half the length of the back and tied in front just beneath the breasts in the middle by a knot made with the edges of the two panels. The nine-yard sadi is worn generally by elderly women and is known as lugade in Marathi. It is forty-five to fifty-two inches in width and it has two length-wise borders called kanth or kinar and also two breadth-wise borders called padar at the two ends, of which one is more decorated than the other. The mode of wearing the lugade by Maratha Brahman women and similar castes is with the hind plates tucked into the waist at the back-centre and the decorated end (padar) thrown over the left shoulder. Maratha women allow it to hang from the waist down straight and round like a skirt and draw its end which covers the bosom and back over the head. Sadis of five or six yards in length have become fashionable among young women and girls chiefly in urban centres. These are worn cylindrically over a parkar or ghaghra also called petticoat. The old-fashioned choli is discarded by them and the use of brassiers, blouses, polkas and jumpers has now become quite common everywhere. A reversion to new type of cholis in the form of blouses with low-cut necks and close-fitting sleeves up to the elbow and in some cases sleeveless blouses are noticeable.

Working-class women draw the loose end of the sadi fluttering on the back from the left shoulder, tightly in front from under-neath the right arm and tuck it in the wrap of the sadi at the waist. They do not allow the manifold pleats to dangle low at the ankles but tuck them tightly at the back.

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