And its symptoms the runaway bmws, the illegal speak-easies are all around us. In fact, they are increasingly a part of the glamorous life which more and more of us crave. Look around Mumbai or Delhi today and you will see how ugly we have become. The IIC has an extraordinary ambience like a time warp. The women, with their handloom shawls, could be refugees from the Cottage Industries Emporium of the 1950s and the men look like they are vice chancellors of some mofussil university.
T o live simply and unostentatiously is a virtue which is fast dying out in our country.
Today we find gleaming marble and polished granite everywhere. Forgotten is the noble dignity of handloom. Perhaps because, unfortunately for us, Gandhiji s enthusiasm for khadi was a political and not an aesthetic position. So it gradually faded away, as its political correctness waned. This is quite different from what happened in Japan.