Fabindia, the business the late John L. Bissell built, set trends in the textile trade. But it was for different reasons the transplanted American was so highly esteemed by associates.
A friend recalls the man and his work.

With their antennae permanently positioned to lure the passing customer, retailers tend to be the most sensitive denizens of the marketplace. Everything affects them—bad weather, rent laws, shrinking wallets or a depressed economy. But there are some shops that acquire an immunity to these and allied bazaar disorders. One such exception is Fabindia—drop in on any slow-selling summer afternoon and its showrooms are a buzzing hive of activity. John L. Bissell, the man who started Fabindia as a small enterprise 38 years ago and turned it into a household word representing good taste at affordable prices, was an exceptional man himself.

He was a highly individual American who brought New World merchandising to Old World handlooms, and succeeded in striking the precise balance between commercial profit and social commitment. He left the world of Seventh Avenue retail to make India his home but carried with him the lingering spirit of American liberalism that staunchly defends the virtues of honesty, self reliance and respect for the dissenting voice. In this he remained, as his banker friend Peter Jeffreys put it, “the quintessential Connecticut Yankee...captivated but not deceived by India.... His observant eye and critical tongue were not the least of the innumerable contributions he made to India.” Together with his wife, Bimla Nanda, John struck a talent for friendship and hospitality that placed the Bissells at the heart of political, social and diplomatic Delhi for 40 years. A more consistently successful, influential and enjoyable Indo-American partnership can scarcely be imagined.

When Bissell died in March, aged 66, after a long, valiantly-borne illness, John Burns, The New York Times’  South Asia correspondent, sent a couple of personal dispatches to his managing editor, Joe Lelyveld: “...I went to a memorial gathering for John Bissell this evening, along with le tout Delhi. Ministers, top bureaucrats, academics, artists, industrialists, writers, journalists, philanthropists, ambassadors, friends; all were there, about 300 people gathered under a shamiana in the drizzling rain that El Nino has brought to north India this year.” I.K. Gujral, then prime minister, was politely requested not to come lest his security disturb others; but M.S. Gill, the chief election commissioner, was there, reported Burns, “fresh from shepherding 330 million souls into his polling booths....”

Unknown aspects of Bissell came to light that evening, as family and friends took turns to remember him; most moving of all was a tribute read out in an emotion-choked voice by Arun Shourie, the writer and member of Parliament, on behalf of Mita Nandy, the moving spirit behind the Spastics Society, herself too ill to attend the memorial. “I met John 19 years ago,” she wrote, “when we started the Spastics Society in rented premises without the money to pay the first month’s rent.... He not only gave us all that we asked for continuously but also, unsolicited, gave us very large donations which helped to pay our salary bills. There was such dignity in John’s giving. He was a shy giver, he did not want to be thanked.”

Strong impulses, freak occurrences and unshakable convictions shaped the life of this lanky New Englander, with his slight stoop, air of quizzical concentration and donnish wardrobe composed entirely, it seemed, of crumpled kurtas and worn trousers. Professor Bissell, you were most likely to assume. But suddenly the gruff voice and taciturn manner—for he was hopeless at small talk—would dissolve into loud guffaws at a ribald joke retold with a string of expletives (“John, John!” Bim would remonstrate, and ever the decorous Punjabi matron, color deeply to the roots of her hair).

Bissell came, though he would be appalled in any way to show it, from a wealthy, well-connected family. His great-grandfather had presided over the fortunes of one of the great Midwestern railroads, and from that came his endless love of train travel. His grandfather was president of the Hartford Fire & Life Insurance Company, in the insurance town of Hartford, Connecticut, who later bought and lived in Mark Twain’s house. That gave Bissell the confidence to handle money responsibly and the feeling for spacious, comfortable homes. And his father, later an editor at Newsweekmagazine, who had traveled to India after World War II, fired his son’s imagination about the subcontinent. Young Bissell went to an exclusive prep school in Andover, Massachusetts, later to Yale, and spent two years in the U.S. Navy in Korea.

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