Suit yourself

File photo of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in controversial pinstripe
monogrammed bandhgala suit during US President Barack Obama's
visit to India last month. (PTI Photo)

Joel Rai, BS, February 21, 2015: When Prime Minister Narendra Modi's advisers, taken aback by the dressing down they got on social media, chatterati circles, television studios and at the hustings, realised that sartorial customisation might not be the man's strongest suit, they knew they had to be on the button when it came to his attire. 

"Get rid of all pinstripe suits," they pleaded. "Make your wardrobe more swachh with a preponderance of Indian cuts and colours." And that is how the auction of a monogrammed suit came about.

The prime minister is an admired man and there is no dearth of people who would not give the shirt off their backs to be able to have a piece of Modiji at home. I heard somewhere that cricketer Yuvraj Singh had even approached his father to put in a joint bid. "You know, papaji, I have quite a lot of cash with me even if I am not in the World Cup team ," the newly recruited Delhi Daredevils man is supposed to have told his indulgent father. By now, you would have already heard the news that, like the cricketer, many others from businessmen and newborns named Narendra to Ganga cleaners and diehard 'Mann Ki Baat' fans wanted to have the woolen apparel in their wardrobes.

I met Amod Das Dinare at the auction site, staring at the mannequin - I must admit the ghastly plasticky object did no justice to the prime minister - on whom the said suit was draped. He had bid a fair bit of his savings and was visibly excited. "Why, yes, I am," he panted when I asked him if he was an ardent supporter of the leader. "But I want to wear the suit for another reason." Wiping away the shower of excited spittle, I concluded that Amod bhai's overweening ambition was to wear his name in public, like his idol. But I was puzzled. Where was his name on the suit? The animated bidder shoved a piece of paper in my hand. It had a string of letters, rather like the sequencing of the political genome. Most of the letters were scored out in this fashion:

NARENDRADAMODARDASMODINARENDRADAMODARDASDASMODINARENDRA ... Aha, clever fellow, the epitome of jugaad, he was going to ink out some letters and proudly wear a bandhgala that spelt out his name, only it wouldn't be pinstripes, more like houndstooth weave.

There was one foreigner there who looked like a veteran bidder. I say this because his face was expressionless, like Abhishek Bachchan's in his movies, and he placidly twitched his finger while pointedly staring at the auctioneer instead of screaming "two crores" in a shower of spittle. I buttonholed him: "Why?" From his accented reply, I deduced he was an American. "I am bidding on someone else's behalf," he let me know between three twitches of his right index finger. "Of course, I can't reveal whom." But of course. "How interested are you in winning?" He considered me with a conspiratorial look and whispered, "Well, when I told the man on whose behalf I am bidding that with Mr Modi's plethora of fans we might not win, he chided me with a, 'Yes, we can'." But why did the anonymous American want the Indian leader's vestment? Was it because it represented the trappings of democracy? "Well, he did confide in me that the suit had hypnotised him enough to have calmed him though sessions of intense name-dropping at press meets and on radio. You must understand that I cannot tell you more than that for fear of revealing my client's identity." I could understand. After all, the suit does have a magic charm that can make or break electoral fortunes.