The Clothing of Books

1.
The Charm of the Uniform
 
In the house of my father s family in Calcutta, which I visited as a child, I would watch my cousins getting dressed in the mornings. They got themselves ready for school; I, on the other hand, was on vacation. They donned every morning, after bathing and before having breakfast, the same thing: a uniform.
 
My cousins attended different schools and therefore their respective uniforms were also different. My male cousin wore navy blue cotton pants. My female cousin, a few years older, wore a sky-blue skirt. Apart from these two colors, and the yellow tie my male cousin had to knot around his collar, the rest of the uniform was identical: a white short-sleeved shirt, white socks, black shoes.
 
In the closet there were surely two pairs of navy pants, two sky-blue skirts. It was enough to put on what was cleaned and pressed. In America, before leaving for India, my mother would buy several pairs of white socks, knowing that my aunt would be grateful for them.
 
However simple and functional, I found my cousins uniforms splendid, fascinating. On the street, on buses and trams, I was struck by this visual language, thanks to which one could identify and classify thousands of students in such a large and populous city. Every uniform represented belonging to one school or another. Each of my peers in Calcutta enjoyed, to my eyes, a strong identity and, at the same time, a sort of anonymity. This is the effect of the uniform.
 
I would have liked a uniform myself. Whenever I would go to the seamstress to be fitted for new clothes a particular adventure I could experience only in India, where, in the 1970s, it was still common to wear handmade garments instead of buying one s clothing in stores I was tempted to ask for one. It was a foolish desire on my part. Apparel of this kind would have been of no use for me. In America I attended public school, where everyone wore what they wanted. And I

JHUMPA LAHIRI is the author of four works of fiction: Interpreter of Maladies, The Namesake, Unaccustomed Earth, and The Lowland; and a work of nonfiction, In Other Words. She has received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize; the PEN/Hemingway Award; the PEN/Malamud Award; the Frank O Connor International Short Story Award; the Premio Gregor von Rezzori; the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature; a 2014 National Humanities Medal, awarded by President Barack Obama; and the Premio Internazionale Viareggio-Versilia, for In altre parole.