Hopefully, he led the good life, may his soul rest in peace. But what did Amar Singh really do for a living? Im not sure.
Amar Singh. File pic
Only someone who's even briefly worked in a tabloid will empathise with what I'm about to narrate. The rest can continue to believe 'paid media' — as if there should be any profession left unpaid — comprises only a group of sold-out louts, lazing around in laps of the mighty.
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The job can get quite tough you see, especially a few hours before a newspaper goes to bed (parlance for print) when every story slotted for the front page has freakishly fallen through. What do you do in such an extremely uncommon situation?
No, you can't make up a story. But you can come close to it. And blame it on a bad-news day! As we did one such night, fishing out a press release that announced Mayawati hosting a party for a few Bollywood folks, in 2003, on her maiden visit to Mumbai as the Uttar Pradesh chief minister.
'Mayawati poaching on Amar Singh's territory?' Let's get Amar Singh to respond! You could only call him Amar Singh, it seems — never Amar, nor Singh. Except that Amar Singh called back only much later in the night.
I was out, but it was not too late still, since it seemed like I was talking to the final draft of the front page itself: "Let her dance and party; she's a nachaiya, gawaiya…" Or some such coarseness. All the abuse that's fit to print (sorry New York Times). For someone known to win friends and influence people, Mayawati, it appears, remained his life-long nemesis still.
The next morning Amar Singh, who had reached Bombay as well — probably looking at himself in the mid-day front-page, selling alongside Dale Carnegie's paperbacks on the street — asked to see me (at the Oberoi lobby). Mind you, I was pretty much straight out of college then.
"Hadn't thought of that [news] angle. Caused a blood-bath," Amar Singh said, casually sunk into his sofa. "Blood-bath," were his exact words, for a scuffle (between supporters of UP's top political parties, SP and BSP), that apparently took place outside the Taj, where Mayawati was staying.
I just couldn't find a way to say no to the meeting. Didn't wish to interview him. He was fine with that. Another journalist joined in, asking questions on-record. He regaled me with his humility later about how he hadn't a penny against his name — just a bunch of friends, thanks to whom he could fly private-jet, and live the high-life.
It's a good life, one might think, centred on friends, that Aristotle famously said you can make for three reasons — virtue, pleasure, and utility. Virtue being the reason you should. Utility was often quoted as to why you might wish to know Amar Singh. For, that automatically implied being friends with someone who's a friend of the richest and most famous.
Which also equals pleasure, if you're into gossip, because he could be quite candid over a mood-piece on the top floor. Beyond that, there's pleasure as a pure perk. I met his chela in Lucknow bragging to me about being able to dine deep inside Juhu beach, with cops cordoning off the long-table, and spirits in full flow. In the mid-2000s, the chela claimed he used to be Amar Singh's right-hand man in Bollywood — supposedly helping out with ongoing, multiple shoots, stationed at the JW Marriott in Juhu.
Amar Singh was, no doubt, the most thanked person in the opening slate of a Bollywood movie then. I know this, having spoken to him for a story on this. What was he really being thanked for? For the love/blessing, or some such lameness is what I guess he must've said.
I wouldn't know any more than one instance where Amar Singh's guy apparently sat between two mainstream filmmakers — at loggerheads over a copyright/title issue. The gentleman sent in to mediate said only thing (in Hindi, the more emotional language): "Do please consider what I'm humbly suggesting. I'll feel really hurt otherwise, sir." The industry dispute got settled in a second.
The other Amar Singh stories one heard had the terms of reference of a high-school fracas — make-up, break-up, intro (introduction), compro (compromise). With the initiation/ingratiation process in the desi liaison industry — based on peddling information and influence — that probably starts with, "Mere layak koi seva?" And ends with, "Kaam ho gaya. Aarti le lijiyega."
What need does a person standing at the intersection of business, law, politics, and show-business (softest of them all) fulfil? Foremost, save you from harassment of the system, I suspect. He does what a grassroots politician (or the cadre, as they're called) helps with, among the poorest. Amar Singh similarly appeared as the 'ameeron ka messiah' — the same reason every Indian middle-class household still hopes for a bureaucrat in the family (by marriage, if possible).
He started a political party in 2011, practically as a post-retirement plan, having lost elections thereafter, sulking for years, yet an Independent Rajya Sabha MP. Before that, much loved, you could find him everywhere — from a soft feature in the pink/business press to the filmy-yellow Stardust magazine top-story. In a strictly economic/manufacturing/services sense, what did Amar Singh really do for a living? Happens in India; I'm not sure.
Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper
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