M amma mia, here I go again My, my, how can I resist you? There’s something comfortingly reassuring about this Abba hit as you enter the workspace of fashion designer Rohit Bal at his store in Delhi’s Defence Colony. That the chorus should play just before we are to meet is nothing short of a metaphor for the artist’s brush with life and death over the last few years as he battled heart disease and kept going in and out of hospitals. But my, my, how can the enfant terrible of Indian fashion resist life itself? And so, clad in his trademark black T-shirt and blue jeans, he hums, “Hey, here I go again,” with a fist bump.
There was a time last November — Bal was admitted in ICU in a critical condition and put on ventilator for a longish spell — when doctors were a worried lot. He already had a compromised heart after an angioplasty in 2010 and other complications. Recovery seemed a distant prospect, but Gudda, as he is lovingly called by fashion industry peers, walked out of hospital, pale and frail, but more determined to leave his stamp on the world.
Some colleagues had written him off, but at 63, white-haired and much wizened, the man has never been more in control of his life and legacy as he announced his return with a gratitude post on Instagram. “Let’s not talk about my hospital days, it has been four months, I have left them far behind, I’m here in the now,” he says. Advertisement He’s just come back from his unit in Noida, where he’s working wi.