The paag — a tapering cloth headdress — is the proudest emblem of Maithil identity, worn to mark honour and respect. Its colour tells a story: red for bridegrooms and the sacred-thread rite, mustard-yellow for wedding guests, white for elders. To offer a paag is to confer dignity, and a campaign has carried it from village courtyards to public ceremony.
Around it sits the wider language of Maithil dress — the dhoti and kurta with the paag for men; the bright sari and, for married women, the pink bhuswa sindoor and the aripan-painted threshold of the home. Cloth and colour, here as everywhere in Mithila, carry meaning.