Safari suit suite
Sukumar Ranganathan -
Monday, December 08, 2008 11:55 AM
Under News
I know it's a little late in the day to be pointing to reviews of Quantum of Solace but this one in The New Yorker was so good that I couldn't resist it.
Here's a sampling:
Sean Connery smoldered like Troy, but that told us nothing about the fires within. As for Roger Moore, he didn’t need a soul. He had a safari suit.
Safari suits used to be big in India. These days, they're worn only by bureaucrats (especially south Indian ones) and those people who have spent the past twenty-five years in outer space after being abducted by aliens, but there was a time when everyone wore them.
One of India's biggest business empires, Reliance, was built on its founder's premise that no man was complete without a Safari suit.
Everyone, the late Dhirubhai Ambani is often quoted as saying in a story that is probably apocryphal, needs at least two safari suits -- one to wear and one in the wash.
Those days, however, are long gone.
Safari suits are now considered sartorial oddities -- and rightly so.
Polyester shirts are, too (and never mind the cost; polyester was never meant to be worn in a tropical country like India). And Reliance played a part in introducing the polyester culture in India.
While on the subject of Reliance, today's Mint has an interesting article on how prices of many of RIL's petrochemical products have slid up to 60% in the past few months.