Right at the end of GN Chetty road in Chennai, just before it meets up with Mount Road, if you were to look up at the hoarding there, it would surely leave you smiling – Wow, James Bond, you’d say, and then notice the dhoti wrapped casually around his waist. (The hoarding features a TV channel’s advertisement about James Bond movies being aired in Tamil.)

I have seen dhoti advertisements aplenty – men of distinction wearing blinding white veshtis with a sharp crease getting off lifts or into them, going up stairs or down them. But this one packs a Bond-like punch. There’s the slit-eyed Daniel Craig looking to his side, as if at the glamorous beauty hanging on his arm, all the while dressed in plain shirt and veshti! He looks mean and lean.

With so many reams being written about the humble dhoti today, especially on whether it is allowed into elite clubs or not, what better endorsement for this garment than 007 himself, even if a photo-shopped version? Bond with the best, veshti lovers would say.

Interestingly, other Bond action heroes too are doing their bit, it seems. As I was getting this photo uploaded, an office friend strolled over and remarked, “Oh, you are talking of that Pierce Brosnan hoarding at T Nagar.” “No, it’s Daniel Craig,” I insisted. Turns out both of us are right. The hoarding she refers to features Brosnan in bright clothes alongside a lady in a choli draped on his arm.

Well, Bond by any name is James Bond after all!

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