As a teenager, I wrote a play about two young men in college. One arrived each day looking as if he had stepped straight out of a fashion catalogue, wearing stylish new clothes with all the pride of a peacock at mating season. The other had a simpler wardrobe. White kurtas, the same jeans, and perhaps a face that suggested he had more important matters to think about than matching socks with ambition.
In the play, the fashionable fellow laughed at the simpler one. He mistook appearance for superiority, wardrobe for worth, and style for substance. Both later stood for the college elections, and to the great shock of the human clothes hanger, the kurta and jeans candidate won. At the end, the winner turns to the defeated man and says, “Clothes do not make a man.”
I have often wondered whether I should resurrect that play. Because looking around today, I suspect it may no longer be fiction. We live in a country where many seem deeply impressed by costume, convoy, camera angle, and carefully managed spectacle. We have learnt to clap for presentation before checking performance. If a leader changes two or three expensive outfits a day, we stare in admiration, as though frequent costume changes are part of good governance.
It is all rather tragic. The emperor’s new clothes have not merely fooled the court. They seem to have dazzled the whole kingdom.
Why are we so fascinated by display? Why do clothes, cars, lighting, slogans, and stage managed grandeur hypnotise us so easily? Somewhere within us is a weakness for glitter. We are drawn to appearance because it saves us the harder work of discernment. Looking at fabric is easier than examining character. Admiring a shawl is simpler than asking whether the shoulders under it carry honesty, compassion, courage, and truth.
And this inability to see beyond outer covering does not stop with clothes. We are also deceived by other costumes. Religion is used as costume. Fear is used as costume. Bogeys are stitched and tailored for public display. Forced conversion. Love jihad and fictitious conversations with world leaders.
These are worn before our gullible people like dramatic cloaks, and while we gasp at the costume, we often fail to examine the heart beneath.
That is why the old words spoken to the prophet Samuel remain so piercingly relevant: man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart.
The real question is whether we can do the same.
Can we look beyond the wardrobe, beyond the polished speeches, beyond the religious wrapping, beyond the public performance, photo ops, and discern the man beneath?
Because if we cannot, then we will keep electing costumes yet keep wondering why the world stares at us, laughs and whispers we are actually undressed…!
The Author conducts an online, eight session Writers and Speakers Course. If you’d like to join, do send a thumbs-up to WhatsApp number 9892572883 or send a message to bobsbanter@gmail.com
