Datta Phuge is a man with the Midas touch .... he loves gold and has managed to make this obsession his hobby as well as his life. Like his more famous precursor, King Midas of Phrygia in the late 8th century BC, everything he has touched has turned to gold ....
..... mainly as he celebrates each success by buying something gold.
His latest purchase is a shirt of gold. It weighs a 3.3kg (about 7lb), and it cost him a quarter of a million dollars (£162,000) to buy. All this has added lustre to his local nickname of "the gold man", but he can only wear the shirt on special occasions, like parties and important functions, and its value requires that he has an armed security guard with him wherever he travels.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Mr Phuge is from a humble background but made his fortune first as a property speculator, and then as a money lender in the town of Pimpri Chinchwad, outside Pune - south east of Mumbai in India.
Of course in India gold is something of an obsession, and so this is not such an unusual story .... he and his wife have many other gold items, but he is probably one of the few people in the world who really can eat the shirt off his back (after selling it of course).
What he has to be careful about is that the publicity doesn't turn the golden touch into the curse that the legend says consumed King Midas.
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| Midas Touch |
..... mainly as he celebrates each success by buying something gold.
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| Datta Phuge - Golden Shirt |
His latest purchase is a shirt of gold. It weighs a 3.3kg (about 7lb), and it cost him a quarter of a million dollars (£162,000) to buy. All this has added lustre to his local nickname of "the gold man", but he can only wear the shirt on special occasions, like parties and important functions, and its value requires that he has an armed security guard with him wherever he travels.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Mr Phuge is from a humble background but made his fortune first as a property speculator, and then as a money lender in the town of Pimpri Chinchwad, outside Pune - south east of Mumbai in India.
Of course in India gold is something of an obsession, and so this is not such an unusual story .... he and his wife have many other gold items, but he is probably one of the few people in the world who really can eat the shirt off his back (after selling it of course).
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| The King Midas Curse - All He Touched Turned To Gold |
What he has to be careful about is that the publicity doesn't turn the golden touch into the curse that the legend says consumed King Midas.
