India’s best-known film personality’s business debts to be paid off? Amar Singh was at hand. A controversy to be generated and then defused? Amar Singh was at work before applications were invited. A government to be shepherded through a trust vote? Singh, again, working from the outside. The instinctive consultant was the first outlier who flamboyantly challenged contemporary Lutyens’ Delhi, and made himself indispensable to it. He ticked all the wrong boxes. Born in Azamgarh, which was later vilified for terrorism, educated in communist-ruled Kolkata, resident of the wholesale market district of Burrabazar, he didn’t belong in Lutyens’ Delhi.
Two archival news images illustrate his conflicted personality. In one, he stands beside Amitabh Bachchan, who holds up a blown-up flex cheque paying the dues of his company, ABCL. Singh, who may have drummed up the money, holds one corner of the flex, signalling ownership. The other shows Amar Singh’s sandals. Ordinary sandals, not the expensive footwear of Delhi’s politicians. He had taken them off before entering someone’s home, in the time-honoured manner of the ancients.
