Development of humankind is often associated with assimilation into the rhythm of modernity.

I was in Dubai and Abu Dhabi for two weeks, and everybody there dressed like an Arab. There was a uniformity in the way people dressed, but that uniformity was rooted in their own culture. It belonged to them. It emerged from their history, climate, traditions, and collective memory.

Imagine what the world would look like if everybody decided to answer from their own roots.

Most of the developing and developed world now shares a different uniform: the shirt and trousers. How did we end up in a world where everybody is dressing like everybody else?

I am not here to answer that question, because that is a question of the past. The change has already occurred.

Indians no longer have the individual styles that my grandfather or great-grandfather had. My ancestors wore different headgears in different styles. They wore their dhotis in ways that reflected their personalities, regions, and identities. There was something unique about them, something that could be remembered and recalled.

Everybody is blessed with a sense of beauty and aesthetics. Beauty is natural, and aesthetics is an extension of that nature. Aesthetics is where you fall in love with yourself and extend your arms to the world. It is the bridge between your inner life and your outer expression.

You are the most important person in your life.

And your aesthetics should reflect who you are at your core.

Sadly, most people wear clothes like wrappers—manufactured, advertised, and prescribed by forces outside themselves. They dress according to what is available rather than what is true to them.

Imagine billions of people in the world dressing in their own unique way. Imagine the spontaneity and celebration of life that would unfold on every street. Imagine a world where beauty is not repeated through patterns but discovered through individuality.

I would love to be part of that world.

This idea says far more than something about the choice of clothes. It speaks to the freedom to choose your own path, your own politics, your own beliefs, your own faith, and ultimately your own way of being. The freedom to be whosoever you wish to be.

Imagine a gatekeeper, confused because he cannot place you into a category, a group, a tribe, or a crowd. Imagine being impossible to reduce to a label.

Isn’t that liberating?

We stay alive for poetry, beauty, romance, and love. Do you know any greater reason to stay alive? It is the beauty of our individual expression that makes this world beautiful. Uniformity may create efficiency, but individuality creates wonder.

An artist understands this instinctively. When an artist sees something, he exposes it. He reveals what was hidden beneath habit, convention, and repetition.

Look at the world from the artist’s point of view. Look into the mirror with the eyes of an artist.

You are not merely wearing clothes. You are composing a visual poem about yourself. Every choice you make is a brushstroke on the canvas of your life.

You are the Artist, and you are the Art, and there is no one in between you and yourself.

This is the ultimate realisation we strive for: to become so fully ourselves that our very existence becomes an act of creation.