BENGALURU: The Gudda I knew briefly and well, three whole decades ago, was warm, affectionate, guileless, and generous. And a friend. A special one.
We were both making new beginnings: he was fey, radiant, innocent even, freshly catapulted from exports to fashion, at the cusp of celebrityhood. Publishing was exploding in newly liberal India. Flash and cash was the order of the day. Glossies need t ’n a (tit and ass, pardon my French!) to tart up front pages and produce tantalising Page Three spreads.
Gudda, young, smart, personable, winsome, immensely talented, and charismatic, with his gift of the gab, pungent one-liners, and English honours pedigree made the perfect feel good era press/ party mascot! Press headlines, flashbulbs, and fame followed.
Some of it was beginning to go to his head along with generous sloshes of good wine. Yours truly was quietly transitioning from academics to journalism. The timing was right: the print/electronic media scene was pulsating, and vibrant like never before!
We lost touch even as we followed each other’s trajectories. Led parallel lives really: the press and the Flavours of the Week have an umbilical connect! He blazed across the fashion firmament; burned bright, before the proverbial darkness of sex, drugs, and rock’n roll descended upon him. Journalism, television, and my own relationship claimed me.
I met him on and off (inevitable in Delhi where social tectonic plates frequently collide, and overlap...) over the next few years. He was increasingly distanced even from himself; the creature of light transformed into a scowly, jowly, bitter, often incoherent rambler hurtling down a cliff to oblivion. I remember an incoherent, fractured tirade he drunkenly directed at me post my hard-hitting fashion cover story for Outlook in 1999.
Unwarranted, really. The story was less a critique of him than of the farce and media creation the whole fashion business had become at that point. Less commerce, more carnival. And blatantly brazenly unapologetically imitative. Corporates eager to sell cars, textiles, liquor, perfumes, resorts; glossies eager to grab eyeballs, channels eager to boost TRP’s merrily piggybacked on the designer(s) of the moment. It was a win-win for everybody except the conned customer!
But Gudda was good. Very good. An original (one of the very few) in a world of make-believe rip-off artists. But speeding along the highway to Sunset Boulevard. The collections slipped from excellent, superlative, to good to middling to less than good. To plain repeat. At the famed atelier, delegation became a euphemism for manifest disinterest. But he sold. And how! He was a brand now.
The pics sold, and the Joneses competed to get a Gudda! And the fact remained that Bal on a bad day was better than many on their best days! Franchises, allied businesses like the restaurant, the multiple stores across the country, and the Bal bacchey line for kids, occupied his attention.
And nihilism. The Good life. Or bad. Depending on your point of view. Dubious relationships with friends, and lovers. Repeat betrayals by both. Erratic relationship with work that was often neglected else delegated. He seemed propelled by a death wish. The golden waif with dilated pupils and, uncertain gait, seemed a mere shadow of his former glittering self. Multiple hospitalisations, cardiac surgeries, ventilators, and nights in ICUs characterised the decade before he sadly passed.
He rallied
The flame burned brightly, briefly, memorably, towards the end. He was the genius; radiant, aglow, brilliant yet again at the recent fashion week where he, and his collection, were quite the highlight! As swan-like models glided down that night at the Lakmé Fashion Week finale, the gathered assemblage gasped at the sheer beauty of the spectacle that unfolded; Gudda’s swan song. His signature lotuses, peacocks, printed, and embroidered in jewel tones of red, emerald, midnight blue, and gold, on silk, velvet, and sheer cotton shimmered.
The anarkalis swirled, the sherwanis and bandhgalas dazzled. Exquisitely cut, impeccably tailored, dazzlingly accessorised. As only he could. As the show stopper, actor Ananya Pandey, handed him that rose shortly after he came dancing out at the end of the show, he stumbled as he embraced her. The eyes twinkled but the light had dimmed. The man was a living manifestation of the fragile ephemeral moments, the wondrous mirage he conjured up for his disbelieving, teary audience that night. As he turned his back to walk back into the wings many intuited they were witnessing the end of a glorious era.
The flaneur, the sparkler, went out then in a blaze of light. His life, and his death, the stuff of legend, fable, morality tale.
The obits will come fast and furious. All brides are beautiful. All dead men are good. Yes, but they’re also humans. Glorious, memorable. And flawed. Therefore beautiful. Like Japanese Kintsugi is. Broken but gorgeous.
RIP Gudda. Knowing you, the party continues wherever you are. Shine on you crazy diamond!