Safari suits? Eeew!

The safari shirt was originally designed for you guessed it ... a safari. It was originally a lightweight cotton upper garment in colours like khaki or olive green designed for the man-about-town almost a hundred years ago for going hunting in the African bush. It would have at least four pockets to carry the stuff needed and also often had bandolier-like loops to hold cartridges.

Somewhere down the line, it was paired with matching trousers and morphed into what we now call a safari suit. Further down the line, expeditions to the bush became less popular for a variety of reasons like the emergence  of independent African nations, lessening of the influence of the European countries and much greater importance given to conservation of wildlife rather than to hunting them, to name just a few. Somehow the safari suit jumped continents, landed in India and in the seventies or the eighties was virtually the uniform of the small businessman or the Indian Government or public sector employee. It is not that popular today and one generally sees only policemen assigned to the security detail of VIPs clad in this. In my opinion, it is about the only men's garment which doesn't look good on anybody - white, black or brown, tall or short, lean or round. I have not seen one individual able to carry it off - and have seen quite a few wearing this monstrosity of dress!

Adding to my distaste for this men's suit is the mental associations with it. It brings to mind a host of unpleasant bosses, largely in family-owned organisations, almost all of them overbearing, rude and fairly incompetent with many of them having the filthy habit of carrying a small tin of Paan Parag and dipping into it incessantly. My experience in these two or three companies was bad and not helped by the association to the safari suit. Of course, worse than a safari suit itself was a badly-stitched and ill-fitting safari suit, which many of the lower-level wannabes in these companies sported, often in an attempt to suck up to the bosses.

The other memory attached to the safari suit is equally unpleasant as it was connected to a blatant attempt at bribery. My colleague and I had called on a prospective vendor. Before discussions had even started at the office, we were taken to a warehouse nearby where lots of textiles were stacked. We suddenly realised that this organisation and a large textile manufacturer of that time were connected. We were offered lengths of cloth for stitching safari suits which we politely declined. We returned to the office and left after a polite interval.

Fortunately, after liberalisation, the safari suit started losing its popularity to the comeback of business suits and except a few remnants in government and semi-government outfits one hardly sees this vestmen. In my second career as a teacher, I have seen only two or three colleagues sporting this outfit and all of them had a government connection. While two of them had worked in nationalised banks, one had worked in a government-run telecom company. One of the bankers used to pair this with ankle-length socks too, exposing to public gaze acres of skin whenever he hitched up his trousers.

All the more reason to take an exclamation from my students' vocabulary and go Eeew, whenever I see somebody wearing a safari suit !

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All the way to the boundary!

Indian cricket has come a very long way in my lifetime. At the end of the recently concluded Cricket World Cup, Indian fans were disappointed that India lost in the semi-finals, but about forty years ago, they would have been quite happy with India winning even one of their league matches in a World Cup. Providing a backdrop to this transition was the big change in mode of coverage from radio to television.

As a person well into his sixties and also an avid cricket fan, I have moved along with this transition and have hardly heard cricket commentary over the radio for perhaps twenty five years. A news item about a week ago caught my eye. It was about the demise of Anant Setalvad, one of the doyens of Indian radio commentary and set me trying to recall the names behind the voices which provided me this entertainment during my childhood and early adulthood.

Among Indian commentators, the earliest voice I heard perhaps was that of the Maharajkumar of Vizianagram, known popularly as Vizzy. His booming voice would recount innumerable tales, often showing himself in a positive light. Since he was from a royal family, perhaps, the other commentators would not point out that the game in progress was not being covered. Vizzy is of course notorious in Indian cricket lore for sending Lala Amarnath back controversially for 'indiscipline' from one of India's first tours to England in 1936. That was the era where the neighbourhood kids' policy of 'I own the bat, only I'll play' was in effect. Vizzy was one of a few Maharajas who bankrolled the Indian team in that era and expected to play in the team, irrespective of ability or skill!

Lala Amarnath himself became a pretty ubiquitous radio expert later, though occasionally his love for his two sons who also played for India overrode his estimation of their ability vis-a-vis India's other stalwarts ! The Lala had for company in the expert's chair two greats of Indian cricket - Vijay Merchant and Polly Umrigar. The first was very articulate and the second a bit measured in his remarks - but both were at the top when it came to cricket knowledge.

These experts complemented the efforts at various times of names such as the booming tones of Pearson Surita, Anant Setalvad of the silky baritone, the cricket administrator Raj Singh Dungarpur, the slightly verbose Suresh Saraiyya, the taciturn Berry Sarbhadikari - who unfortunately committed suicide in the '70s - and the Chennai trio of  another man with a lovely voice,V M Chakrapani,  Balu Alaganan and the hotelier Ananda Rao with his elaborate descriptions in a slightly nasal drawl. Hindi commentary during this era was generally in the hands of Ravi Chaturvedi and Susheel Doshi, the latter's description of a boundary (aur yeh chaaar run!) still ringing in my ears.

V M Chakrapani migrated to Australia and became part of the ABC cricket commentary team too, joining people like Alan McGilvray of the fruity voice and Lindsay Hassett. Radio commentary of matches played abroad was a bit of a lottery because of the then level of technology. The result was frequent interruptions in transmission. The time differences also ensured that one, being a schoolboy in a disciplined household was not allowed to hear too much commentary at odd hours. I hardly remember the names of any West Indian commentators for instance - Tony Cozier whom I followed a lot on television later was possibly one such. In the BBC Test Match team, the names of John Arlott, Brian Johnston and Henry Blofeld stand out - Arlott for his almost poetic descriptions and the other two for their commentary laced with almost quirky obsessions with chocolate cake and ladies' earrings ! The critical expert, Trevor Bailey. who hardly had a good word for any non-English player also comes to mind.

Unfortunately many of these stalwarts could not successfully make the transition from radio to television. The elaborate descriptions needed in the former were irrelevant in the visual medium and could even be an irritant. This has led to another crop of commentators more attuned to the needs of today's cricket followers and contemporary technology.

Maybe because I cut my teeth on radio commentary, I still miss it. Even after I had started working, I would carry a pocket transistor to work, keeping it in the top drawer of my desk, with the shelf slightly ajar. In the last phase of my career, of course, the open page of the Cricinfo website served the same purpose !

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