The chadra, or tehmat, is a length of cloth wrapped at the waist and knotted, worn by men in rural Punjab with a kurta above it. It is cooler than trousers, cheaper, and it can be hitched up to work in water.
It is what a farmer wore in the field and what a bhangra dancer wears on a stage, which is why the stage version is checked and bright and the field version is plain white or blue.
The kurta above it is loose and side-slit and long. The kaintha, a heavy chain, and the kadha are the ornaments.
The whole outfit has become costume. Almost nobody in a Punjab field wears a chadra to work now; it is trousers and a shirt, or a tracksuit.
The clothes that are worn at a Punjabi wedding to look Punjabi are the working clothes of a generation that is mostly dead.
It is worn two ways. Wrapped and tucked and hanging to the ankle for sitting, for a visit, for going to town; or hitched and knotted short at the knee for work, in water, or on a bicycle. A man moves between the two in a second and does not think about it.
In west Punjab and on the frontier the lungi is often stitched into a tube and is a different garment worn the same way. Which of the two a man wore, and how he knotted it, told you the district he was from before he had said anything.
The kurta is cut loose with a side vent and the fabric is the marker: khaddar in winter, thin cotton in the heat. The whole outfit is made by the village tailor to measurements kept on a card.