This was sometime in the early 90s of the last century.
The story revolves around what for me was an impressive suit length that I had received as wedding gift in January 1982. it remained nicely tucked in my wardrobe for many years. As it was an expensive gift I didn't want any Tom , Dick and Harry tailor of Bhopal to spoil it. Someone suggested that I should get my suit stitched by KK Bakshi attached to the Vimal showroom at Connaught Place in New Delhi. When I reached there, I had to wait for my turn as the master tailor, well in his 60s, was taking the measurement of an elderly gentleman, who was wearing a coat and a dhoti. Standing near him in attendance was a young man, who looked very dapper and I could make out they were father and son. The conversation between the tailor and these persons went like this....The tailor told them why go for a Raymond suit length ( incidentally I was also holding with much pride a Raymond piece). He suggested that they should go for the rarest of rare shahtoosh that's woven with the down hair of the Tibetan antelope. It can be purchased from a certain shop at South Extension for Rs.1 lakh a meter, he said adding for a suit , they would require 5 meters. So if they would be spending Rs.5 lakh on cloth, he would also be able to charge Rs 1 lakh as stitching charge. The tailor further informed them that senior Congress leader Vidya Charan Shukla was his regular customer, who would always come to him with a shahtoosh suit length from the same shop. This solved the mystery.... as I always used to wonder, from where was Vidya Charan getting his extremely fine and cosy suits. After the two gentlemen had left and I stepped forward for measurement clutching my 'costly Raymond piece', I asked the tailor, who were these guys and he said they were the owners of Jindal Steel.
