New Delhi, Aug 16 (TIWN) In many ways, Rajendra Singh Sethia -- the world's biggest bankrupt in the 1980s, long before the insolvency and bankruptcy code emerged in India, or the US saw its share of Chapter 11 bankruptcies -- represents the archetype of a Greek tragic hero. The Nigeria and Sudan experience meant that the wheel of fortune had taken a dive, a death spiral which plunged him to depths.

In many ways, Rajendra Singh Sethia -- the world's biggest bankrupt in the 1980s, long before the insolvency and bankruptcy code emerged in India, or the US saw its share of Chapter 11 bankruptcies -- represents the archetype of a Greek tragic hero. The Nigeria and Sudan experience meant that the wheel of fortune had taken a dive, a death spiral which plunged him to depths of despair.

Overnight the king had become a pauper. He lost his two-storeyed $225,000 'White House' in Hendon, north London, three Rolls Royce, two Mercedes and even a Boeing 707. He lost his businesses in Nigeria and Sudan. His Holland hotel in mid-Manhattan, his tea company in India Jokai and his family (as some members chose to desert him). Yet karma, God and yoga have kept him alive. 

Sethia is the same man who once paid $3.6 million for his Boeing aircraft and spent another $600,000 to install a boardroom, bedrooms, sauna and jacuzzi in the plane. The high flier who belongs to Sujjangarh, near Bikaner, became a Londoner after spending his childhood in Calcutta where his great grandparents moved to just before Partition in 1944.