When I pointed my camera at the man wearing a Gandhi cap, he smiled wryly

The man wore a hat that looked like a piece of folded white cloth. This is known as a Gandhi cap, regarded as one of the symbols of India’s independence movement. Walking through the town of Nashik, one occasionally encounters men wearing this cap. It has not spread to the point of being called a national costume, yet in the old quarters and markets, it is not unusual to see elderly men seated on chairs, sipping tea with a Gandhi cap on their heads. The shape is simple, yet for some reason it brings to mind a sailor’s cap. Under the intense sunlight, the creases of the white cloth reflect the light so strongly that the very distinction between uniform and ordinary attire begins to feel meaningless.

When I pointed my camera at this man, he suddenly gave a faint, wry smile—as though he had seen straight through my fanciful associations. A wry smile is a universal expression, though its nuance differs by country. In Japan, it might serve to soften the mood; in India, it carries more of a tone of resigned acceptance—“Well, that’s just how it is.” Nashik has long been known as a pilgrimage city, for the Godavari River, one of the sources of the sacred Ganges, flows through it. Every twelve years, it hosts the massive religious festival Kumbh Mela, though most of the time it remains an unassuming provincial town. And here, on an ordinary street corner, this man, who offered a defenseless smile to a stranger, was simply another person living his daily life.

Incidentally, the Gandhi cap takes its name from Mahatma Gandhi, the leader of the independence movement who favored wearing it. After independence, it spread among politicians and civil servants as a kind of formal attire. Even today, elderly men in states like Maharashtra often wear it, while younger people sometimes put it on as a fashion statement. To me, it is curious how something as ordinary as a hat can come to bear the weight of history. The wry smile of this man, sitting along the streets of Nashik, seemed to brush aside my sentimentality with ease—and somehow, that felt comforting.