MUMBAI, Nov. 16 -- Mumbai's bespoke tailors have long built their reputations by dressing its leading men. Amitabh Bachchan often donned suits distinguished by the rakish 'Akbar cut'- after Kachins and Gabbana founder Akbar Shahpurwala - and Badasaab's Kishore Bajaj outfitted everyone from Sanjay Dutt to Mithun Chakraborty. Their contemporary Madhav Agasti, however, was always drawn to the villains. Across some 350 films, Agasti dressed a rogue's gallery of baddies, from Anupam Kher's Dr Dang to, most famously, Mogambo, brought to life by his friend and early advocate Amrish Puri. "You couldn't do much with the heroes of the time. But the villains were always rich and powerful. I could give free rein to my imagination," says Agasti, who earlier this week celebrated his 50th year in the business with the release of his autobiography, 'Stitching Stardom'. Besides actors and directors, guests at the event also included representatives from two constituencies that have long favoured his skills and discretion: politicians and bureaucrats. Devendra Fadnavis, the state's chief minister and a steadfast patron, was part of the felicitations, dressed in his trademark bundi jacket, along with BJP leaders Mangal Prabhat Lodha and Ashish Shelar and union minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat. Chief Justice B R Gavai, who often wears suits stitched by Agasti, sent in his congratulations. Many of India's well-regarded tailoring outfits, from Kolkata's Barkat Ali & Bros. to Chennai's Syed Bawkher & Co., trace their lineage to British cutting, but Agasti, 76, was an outlier. He grew up in a large family in Nagpur, where his father, a priest, stitched men's clothes on the side to make ends meet. "I was fascinated by our neighbourhood tailor and would spend hours watching him construct coats. A coat is the most important component of a suit. If you can get that right, all the other elements will fall into place." In his late teens, he defied his parents and went to Gwalior to hone his craft, and in the ensuing years travelled to Delhi, Moradabad and Jodhpur to educate himself in local tailoring traditions and master the bandhgala, sherwani and kurta. Bombay happened, he says, because of a lie. "In Calcutta, I lied to my fellow tailors about having stitched suits for Pran and Dev Anand, and then resolved to myself ke iss jhoot ko sach main badalna hai (I must turn this lie into the truth)." In 1975, after a few years of employment at the fashion-forward Super Tailors in Khar, and cultivating its clients, including the actors Danny Denzongpa and Sunil Dutt, Agasti set up Madhav's Men's Mode in Dadar (the store would eventually relocate to Bandra, where it still stands). Since then, his soft hands and his talent for masking the fundamental asymmetries in men's bodies have quietly shaped how many of our leaders appear in the public imagination: Sharad Pawar's half-sleeved white shirts and white trousers; Bal Thackeray's white shirt-style kurta and Kashmiri shawl; P. V. Narasimha Rao's silk dhoti-kurtas and bandhgalas; and Vilasrao Deshmukh's safari suits. "In this trade, everything happens by word of mouth. The actors I worked with introduced me to politicians who introduced me to yet more powerful people. Sometimes even I'm surprised by the kind of people who call me. A few years ago, we got a call from the then Mozambique president's office!" Most politicians, Agasti says, are not especially fussy about what they wear, as long as they are comfortable. "They are always short on time, and it's up to you to make the best of whatever time you get. I've worked with them in the unlikeliest of places. In 1984, I measured Farooq Abdullah in the airport lounge in Delhi." One exception, he recalls, was former Maharashtra governor and Indira Gandhi confidant P. C. Alexander. "He was a real clotheshorse. He got his suits made on Savile Row. Once at a party, he saw Johny Joseph (former chief secretary) and minister Marzban Patrawala wearing suits stitched by me, and I was summoned to Raj Bhavan the very next day. Sometimes he would even break protocol and visit the store." Anil Gulati, a long-time figure in India's luxury-fabric trade and former India head of Dormeuil, considers Agasti among the finest. "Madhav Agasti has no sho-sha. He just gets the job done - and politicians appreciate that. He's also among the last of the 'travelling tailors' in India. The tradition of master tailors visiting clients' homes with swatches is disappearing rapidly." He may have dressed several of India's most important leaders - and hopes someday to design something for Prime Minister Narendra Modi - but no moment shaped Agasti's career quite like 'Mr India'. In 1985, Shekhar Kapur and Boney Kapoor walked into his Bandra shop with a brief for a villain who was part Western despot, part Indian zamindar. Agasti immersed himself in magazines, newspaper clippings and old film encyclopaedias, building Mogambo from the ground up: an all-black coat covered in skulls and insignia, a gold monogram, breeches for feudal swagger, a frilled shirt, oversized shoes, and just a dash of red to indulge Puri, who insisted on the colour in every costume. Puri only saw the finished version on the sets at RK Studios. "When he saw it, he looked at me and mouthed that famous line, 'Mogambo. khush hua!' And I knew I had nailed it."...