Rabindra influence on Bengali clothing as well

The humorist Syed Mujtaba Ali told the story of a Marathi boy in Shanti Niketan - 'Gurudev was walking out of Dehli through Shalbeethi towards the library, wearing a long beard, a black hat on his head. When everyone saw from behind, Bhandare said something to Gurudev, Gurudev smiled softly, it seemed as if he was telling you little by little. He was pressing on Bhandar. The last one seemed to hum in Gurudev's hand. Gurudev smiled again and put his hand under the job and put it in his inner pocket. gave.'

Marathi boy's surname in Bhandar, has just come to study in Shanti Niketan. The poor man still knew Ashramguru Rabindranath. He knew that if he saw a fakir-dervish on the way, he had to donate something. This was his mother's advice. So he donated an "Athanni".
'Fakir' Rabindranath!
Although it is sometimes ironic, this Alkhalla or Jobba helped Rabindranath in many ways. Most of all, it helped him to become "Gurudev" or "Rishi", and to become the idol of Tagore Puja. But it is not that this was his dress forever; This royal robe came in the last phase of his life. Before that, he was seen in different clothes. Annadashankar also saw him wearing a lungi. If you look at the photographs of Rabindranath taken from the age of 12-13 years to the age of eighty years, the change in clothes can be clearly seen. , that list included pajama, dhoti, panjabi, trouser, collar-coat, achkan, choga-chapkan, pirhan, turban - cap - chadar etc. But twenty-five Baisakh always saw Rabindranath in Dhoti - Punjabi - Oriyat. Even in Iran, China, Hawaiian Islands, Japanese ships floating in the Pacific Ocean.
However, Rabindranath did not mark the dhoti-Punjabi as the standard dress of a Bengali man forever. In his early youth, Pathan - leaving the Mughal dress and adopting the common Bengali dhoti - Punjabi, seems to have shouldered the unwritten responsibility of determining a dignified attire for a Bengali man. Perhaps one of the reasons for this is that his mistress Gnandanandini Devi had already brought a Bengali woman's saree. Elegance and elegant modernity. Perhaps another reason, Barada Dwijendranath's quip, 'Bina kotata hatata dhoti pirhane maan roy na'. The Bengali woman's saree, the beauty and elegance of this dress is our eternal pride; and then the question arises in the mind, what is the Bengali man's dress? Or any at all. Do you have your own clothes? The dhoti is acceptable, but it is not Bengali, the word has an Indian touch, it comes from another country.
When you look at the wall, you can understand the ambivalence of some prominent Bengalis in the 19th century about clothing. Prince Dwarkanath, Rammohan, Vidyasagar, Madhusudan, Devendranath, Sri Ramakrishna, Bankimchandra, Vivekananda, Dwijendralal --- all of them were comfortable in sahib clothes, some only in dhoti - chadar, some in turban, some in Kabuli - Pathan clothing. Traditional, just the bright orange color - that's modern. But they are not Rabindranath; They did not shoulder the unwritten responsibility of building culture. They did not want anything more through clothes than just nobility and beauty.
Perhaps only Bankim Chand could grasp the problem. So Hanuman created by him (Hanumdvabu Sanbad) drinking water at his own house, drinking alcohol at his friend's house and throat-snapping at the brothel left off the Bengali coat-pantulun-hat-glasses-chain-whip, but he could not determine the proper dress of a Bengali man. His special Kalamchi, who came with Rajpoo from Bilat, wrote about the Bengali dress, 'Some wear pantulon like us, some wear pajamas like Turkdig, and some imitate whom, unable to bear anything, they keep their clothes only tied around the waist.'
The evil of Bengali men's clothing was first noticed by revivalists like Dwarkanath-Rammohan. In the 19th century, one can see the evolution of that clothing. One is sahib clothing like coat-pant, another is Bengali clothing wrapped in dhoti-chadar, the other is Muslim clothing from Afghanistan-Turkey. And now Millijuli version of all this is going on. A few decades ago, a Bengali could be seen wearing a coat over a dhoti, or a European shirt with a Muslim pajama. Genji-Bermuda has come to the fore. However, if there is a dhoti or pajama with a Punjabi, Bengali men are considered to be fairly decent clothes. However, this combination of dhoti and Punjabi is Anshla. Pajama is out of the question. Punjabi came from Uor - India in the west or even more Uor - Iran - Afghanistan outside India in the west. The enlightened men of the Tagore family knew that. So Pathan - mixed a bit of European style with Mughal clothing and shouldered a Bengali shawl over it. Satyendranath, Jyotirindranath, and even Rabindranath were sympathetic. But they were not satisfied and could not accept it as final. So they changed their clothes again and again. But Dhoti-Punjabi was the most relaxed in the celebration of his twenty-fifth Boishakh birthday. Officially, his birthday was first celebrated at the age of 27. Unbelievable as it may seem, it is true that there is no news of this youngest poet of Thakurbari celebrating his birthday until the age of 25-26. Neither the mother nor the two dearest daughters-in-law, Gnandanandini Devi and Kadambari Devi, lit the lamp in front of the boy Rabindranath and passed the bowl of Payesh, there is no such news-pictures in Jorasanko's Thakurbari.