The Baron de Charlus once told me: 'It was, surprisingly, on a grey afternoon in a rainy English town that I first encountered that epitome of oriental exotica, Punjab by Capucci. A grizzled old ex-soldier with one eye thrust it into my hands and demanded: "Smell her, matey, and re-port your im-preshuns! I served in the old Indian Empire and I knows the jewels from the jumbles, I knows the devas from the dregs, I knows the kings from the cruds! She's mighty fine, ain't she?"
Applying said fragrance to both wrists, I reported my impressions as instructed. "My dear fellow," I replied, "wherever turbans and moustaches meet incense and dust under a scorching heat, wherever ferocious warriors embrace dark-eyed maidens, wherever love, loyalty, treachery and hate reach bacwards into the history of a proud and mystical continent, wherever in the forensic glare of noonday or the seductive velvet of night come whispers of the ancient epics of a superlative race - so, too, shall Punjab be there! Atten-shun!"'
