Being fashionably arty

Not Quite page 3

Art and fashion. That’s what this last weekend’s been about. Gautam Singhania adds one more arrow to his quiver, this time with an Italian brand. Since his company, Raymond, is probably the first Indian company to have created a local brand that still endures, this is a departure from tradition. Not that anyone’s complaining. Certainly not Gautam. Nor Claudio Grotto, the man behind Gas. Who tells Jackie Shroff and me that he began as a simple tailor before creating the business.

Across the ramp from me, Ritu Shastri says Ravi is busy packing his bags as team manager for our cricket team’s Bangladesh tour. A couple of seats down, Dolly Thakore tells me of her time in Hyderabad, performing to a packed audience she says, but it would have been nice to have a nawab or two to bring back. Her friend Scheherazade Javeri points out there were three there. Which ones, asks Dolly. The short one, the fat one and the skinny one, comes the reply. Dolly figures she’s better off empty handed.

The next morning I meet another complete man. Dilip Kuruvilla is a financial hotshot I’ve known since my years in Madras. I am gob-smacked when he calls to invite me to a showing of his sculptures. This is a man who’s more comfortable with PE ratios. Now he’s painting, writing poetry and sculpting. He tells me he does this under the almost pseudonym George K. His Christian name followed by an initial. I tell him not to worry. I spent years as a banker pretending that wasn’t me on Channel V. As it happens he shouldn’t be worried. In the time I spend with him at the NCPA’s Nicholson Gallery, there are enough bankers who come down to see his work. Not one of them turns an eyelash at his second profession. 

The next evening I tell Ritu Prakash, through whom I’ve bought most of the art on my walls, that it’s time to sell. Her Galleria is exhibiting a collection of artists at the Museum Gallery. Some established. Some names I haven’t heard. All frightfully unaffordable now that I’m no longer a banker. She tells me not to be a fool. Art is more expensive than real estate. I ask Sunny Bilkha if his colleagues in the IT industry are the ones driving prices up. They’re not fools he tells me. Which leaves me asking who’s buying. Bankers, he says. Other people have more sense.