Money makes philosophers, fatalists or eccentrics out of those blessed enough to sprinkle pixie dust on the poor. Sometimes, of course, it makes politicians out of the rich. Kanwar Deep Singh is one of those who made it through the hallowed portals of Parliament into the inner recesses of the Rajya Sabha last year.

So what’s the big deal? Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Vijay Darda and Raj Kumar Dhoot — all industrialists, like Singh — were ensconced in their seats long before he surfaced. They were preceded by more formidable names — Anil Ambani and Vijay Mallya, to name a couple.

There is a difference: Singh, now a Trinamul Congress MP, has quickly caught on to the premium that politics draws from the intangibles rather than the swanky. And “humility” is one of them. He makes a production of the attribute by peppering his conversation with aphorisms such as “Conviction is in my heart and dreams are in my eyes.”

Earlier this week, though, he was in the news for all the wrong reasons. The MP made a splash when he was detained by security forces at the Delhi airport — and later released — for carrying Rs 57 lakh. Singh, who was travelling on a private plane to election-bound Assam, said the money belonged to his multi-crore Alchemist group. CPI(M) MP Brinda Karat has demanded that a criminal case be filed against him.

But when we meet Singh days before the incident, there is nothing to indicate that shady deals are at work. He looks like what ace shooter Abhinav Bindra will 30 years hence —bespectacled, earnest and yet natty. Like his younger look-alike, the 49-year-old businessman is from Punjab. Politics enabled him to straddle the geographical distance from the north to the east, from Chandigarh to Jharkhand and now West Bengal.

He joined the ranks of Trinamul Congress MPs last January after debuting from the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM). Exactly a day after the switchover, he was inducted into the Trinamul’s elite core committee and put in charge of the north east.

Singh says it took him a while to figure out what parliamentary etiquette was about. He wore the Cavalli suits he was used to for the past 30 years and rolled inside in a Rolls Royce.

“It was my corporate attire. From Parliament I would rush to my corporate office,” he explains. “Nobody commented on it openly but secretly I was advised by MPs to come in a kurta pyjama. I said I couldn’t do that, though I could do so in an election campaign. But I started a debate on suits versus kurta pyjamas.”

Most young MPs he spoke to said the Indian attire identified them with the aam admi — the common man. “My logic to them was this: rather than bring yourselves to the level of those wearing a dhoti-kurta, uplift such people to the level of the suited-booted by making them literate. These MPs said if you make them literate, they will not vote for you, they will ask questions. I said I want them to ask questions,” Singh argues.

However, he struck a “compromise.” He settled for trousers and shirts with jackets and equipped his wardrobe not with picks from the ethnic repertoire but with customised clothes. Like the black trousers and the luminous green shirt with white collars and cuffs that he turned up in for a long chat at his corporate office in New Delhi’s Nehru Place. The attire, retro Bollywood, was in sync with his large cabin outfitted with multi-hued crystal chandeliers and lamps, and furnishings spangled with sequins and metal shards.

Singh next forsook his Rolls Royce for a “second-hand” Mercedes. “But even that became a talking point. By the next session (of Parliament), I will come in an Ambassador,” he promises.

But the ascetic Mamata Banerjee is seemingly not overly perturbed by Singh’s indulgences. He earned his spurs within a fortnight of joining her by helping wrest for the Trinamul the Konthoujam Assembly seat in Manipur from the Congress.

“Without my asking, the Opposition parties, the BJP and the Manipur People’s Party, supported my candidate. The chief minister (. Ibobi Singh) staked his prestige on this seat. If we show this solidarity, we can make a mark in the next Assembly polls. Of course, on our own without the BJP,” he hastily adds, perhaps in recognition of the importance of minority votes to Mamata.

Singh claims it was the JMM’s truck with the BJP in Jharkhand to put together a coalition government that propelled him to leave the party.

Singh maintains that “something changed” the day he stepped inside Parliament and took oath. “I was going to sit on the very benches where (former Prime Ministers) Nehru and Shastri sat,” he told himself. And there he was, with the JMM, which was striking a deal with the BJP. “I got a shock when the JMM and BJP joined hands because only the other day the JMM was abusing the BJP. I felt disgusted,” he says.

He began prospecting for an alternative, knowing that the crossover would not be constitutionally taken as a defection. As the lone JMM MP in the Rajya Sabha, he could merge his party with another without facing a legal hurdle.

What was to be that party? “When I became a successful businessman, I developed links with politics by natural circumstances,” Singh recalls. He has an aviation training school in Jamshedpur that also leases aircraft to politicians. That was how Lalu Prasad became his chacha and Nitish Kumar ‘Nitishji.’

“Should I go to Laluji or Mulayam Singh Yadav? Or Mayavati,” he wondered before zeroing in on Didi.

“I have known Didi for a long time. She didn’t say yes straightaway. She asked, why Trinamul? I said, Didi I am not here to take anything from politics. I am here to contribute something.” His Member of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS) fund — given by the government to MPs for their constituencies — was used in setting up libraries for tribal children in Jharkhand, he points out. “That’s the benefit of having a person who, unlike other businessmen, is not out to milk politics to his advantage. Didi liked what I said,” claims Singh.

Predictably, he is not short of chanting Mamata paeans. “She is different from the others. Her kind of living will put Mahatma Gandhi to shame. I went to her house, I ate there. I have risen from scratch but today I like my comforts. Her genuine detachment, however, bowled me over. This detachment gives her the energy to fight.”

The grapevine has it that Mamata enlisted him in the party without telling a soul. His detractors in the party believe that businessman Singh sees Jharkhand and West Bengal as under-tapped commercial vistas. Singh has a poultry business in Jharkhand, and is looking at floriculture trade in Bengal.

He shrugs off the questions and moves on to Bengali — the language that his leader is most comfortable with. He understands it, but plans to employ a teacher to learn it formally. “I will learn Bangla because our party is mainly rooted in Bengal,” says Singh, a graduate in English Literature from Chandigarh’s Panjab University.

Singh was born into a family of landlords that occasionally forayed into politics. “I have political genes in my blood. My grandfather was a freedom fighter with Lala Lajpat Rai before Partition. My father was in jail with people like Parkash Singh Badal (Punjab chief minister) when they fought against carving Haryana out of Punjab,” he says. “I used to carry his food to jail. I watched the bonhomie among the political prisoners. They played volleyball and ate together.”

But Singh’s first love was the army. Picking up a bell pepper slice off the relish tray placed before him and sipping hot chocolate, he says he was shortlisted for the forces but was dissuaded from joining by his mother and brothers.

“I entered business by default. I am a first generation entrepreneur from a land-owning family. I said if no fauj (army), then no naukri (job) either.”

He decided to be self-employed and try his luck in Mumbai, where his brother, an officer at a bank, lived. “My father said he would give me money. I said give me your blessings,” he says.

He started with “trading,” he says, without elaborating what he traded in. “I learnt business on the streets, without an MBA. I purchased a second-hand Lambretta scooter and said to myself, KDS, you will drive a Merc if you earn it. It took me 10 years to buy one. The next step was acquiring a private jet. I have one.”

Today, his empire includes 10 companies employing nearly 10,000 people. Singh’s flagship company, called the Republic of Chicken, produces meat products and earned for him the moniker of “Chicken King.”

His other businesses include pharmaceuticals and health care and real estate.

Real estate brings us to the last question of the evening. What does he think of Mamata’s stand on Nandigram and Singur? The answer comes pat: “I was against forcible land acquisition even when I was not with Didi. I opposed Vedanta (in Orissa). The stakeholders have to sit and talk patiently before anything is done,” says Singh.

He adds that when he set up a realty project in Himachal Pradesh, he paid farmers three or four times the market price to win them over. That could be the new talking point.