The once all powerful Amar Singh dies a lonely death
Once upon a time there was a political blockbuster called Amar Singh. Whenever there was a shortage of numbers, it was his job to ensure that there was a houseful. And the funny part was that he delivered, each and every time. He was also a media delight, as he lobbied with the “poweratti”, partied with the “glamouratti” and gossiped with the “chatterati”. Yet, despite having access to Mumbai, Delhi and Washington’s beautiful people, he died a very lonely death. In fact during the last decade or so, he was languishing on the sidelines of the very stage he used to strut around.
There is a reason for that. Men like Amar Singh come with a USP, and his particular brand of speciality was the strongest in the era of coalition politics, particularly during the UPA years when he famously saved the Manmohan Singh government during the nuclear deal. It was he who persuaded the Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav to support the Congress on this. That was also the point where his graph was at his highest and he counted Amitabh Bachchan, Anil Ambani, Sahara Shree amongst his closest friends. The photographs in his study also included a couple of him with the Clintons.
But it was not always like this. He began life as the son of a small-time trader. As he once told Aditi Phadnis (Political Editor, Business Standard) in an interview, “I was born and grew up in a three-room flat on 202 Chittaranjan Avenue. There were five of us and only one bathroom. I still remember the torture in the mornings when all of us used to queue outside the toilet.
Since then I have an obsession with big bathrooms. Every room in my Greater Kailash House has a bathroom. I’ve seen those days; I left home because I didn’t want to continue with my father’s trading business. I had nothing. Proud fathers get suits stitched for their sons. I paid for my first suit myself, when I was 28.”
He journeyed from Kolkata to Delhi and his first political flirtation was with the Congress as he came in contact with the late Madhavrao Scindia. But when a Rajya Sabha seat failed to materialise, Amar Singh soon shifted to the Samajwadi Party, where he befriended SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav (sometime in