Vijay Khanna is a good conversationalist. It is fun to spend an evening with him if good company is in attendance. Sipping the golden liquid that restores the jangled nerves, he would regale vou with hilarious real-life stories.
That evening, Khanna was reminiscing about his early days in an institution that he later headed. He was posted in a factory in a north Indian state. The industrial township had hardly any scope for entertainment other than the film show in the factory club on a 16 mm screen on Saturday evenings. If you had watched the films for a year, you had seen them all, for the same fifty movies were recycled.
It was, therefore, not surprising that the middle-level executives of the company looked for other diversions. What could be better than a get-together of a small group of close friends?
Over time, a pattern emerged: they would gather at the house of one of them. Often, the conversation would be reduced to talking shop. In order that it did not happen, it was decided that every time anyone of those present talked shop, he would be fined the princely sum of a rupee.
The money thus collected would go into a piggy bank fashioned out of a small earthen pot, which they nicknamed 'beer-belly'. When full, it would be used to fund the get-together where ultimately beer would flow.
Year 1972. It was winter. That Saturday evening, they had met in the house of Dibyendu Chatterjee and his wife, Debjani. Dibyendu had a guest staying with him: Kumar, Debjani's brother. The country head of a large multinational corporation, Kumar talked with a clipped accent. Nattily dressed, not a strand of hair out of place, spit-and-polished pointed shoes, a scarf in a shade of rich burgundy around his neck, he was fashion personified.
The conversation that evening inevitably drifted to men's fashion: how solid colours and bold checks had replaced pastels and subtle stripes in shirts, and how complementing shirts and jackets had given way to contrasting combinations. Casual shirts had, at different times, sported dog collars. long collars, pointed collars, short collars, and no collars. Over the decades, the trousers had changed from drainpipes to bell-bottoms to parallels and the lapels of coats had shrunk and become broad.
Chatterjee, our host for that evening, was a soft-spoken man. Suddenly, he asked, "Would you like to see my wedding suit?" He was on the wrong side of 40 and his only daughter was about 13. Which meant the suit would be about 15 years old, Khanna estimated. Was it double-breasted with side-slits? Or was it a solid ink blue or one with bold stripes? Were the lapels broad or narrow? Everybody was eager to see what had been fashionable in, say, the late 50's or the early 60's.
Encouraged by the overwhelming response. Dibyendu went into the house. It was strange, Khanna noticed, that he went towards the kitchen instead of where the wardrobe would be. He soon he emerged and called out to Debjani.
As soon as she went in, an argument in muffled voices and sounds of a minor scuffle could be heard. Apparently, the wife surrendered after the initial resistance for Dibyendu re-emerged, ending the speculation on the reason for the domestic strife. He had a large, shining dekchi (cooking pot) in his hands.
Debjani had exchanged the wedding suit — which the now portly fame of the lanky young man she had married could not get into — for the kitchen utensil from the bartanwala (vendor of vessels on barter terms, a common sight those days). This confirmed Khanna's vague feeling that one morning he had overheard Chatterjee sitting at the next table in the office on the telephone, talking in an agitated tone to someone about a bartanwala.
