King of All Times

There are very few days when I’ve worked after dark, but whenever I do, I make sure to take a look at the lit glass buildings near my office and the fiery collation of brake lights on Richmond road. The UB city is hard to miss from my building. The lit elevator shaft and the blue and red of the helipad on top are always sites I envy. Yday I happened to see a few lit windows too. Mallya must be at work with his managers I thought, or maybe drunk? Whatever the case, but I don’t know if they could afford to burn so many lights I thought to myself and smiled. 

As I was walking out towards the exit I caught a third eye’s view of the top floors of the UB city. He must be working so hard, maybe coming up with something ingenious. I was actually surprised at myself, Mallya has lost a lot of things while trying to revive his airline with a broken wing and yet I seem to have some strange confidence in him. Strange indeed, but that’s when I remembered reading the Forbes of July 20. The cover story said that Mallya and his managers never looked worried or desperate when they went to talk to their banks or investors. In fact there seemed to be an air of poised arrogance in their arguments and they had complete faith in their plans and were completely certain that the KFA would fly again. Their only argument was - FDI.

Banks together have lost close to rupees 7000 crore! More than half the staff of KFA is on strike and none of them have received their salaries from 6 months!! How the hell is he gonna come out of this one?? Then suddenly news comes out that there might be a deal with Diageo, the world’s largest liquor maker. Mallya and Diageo were in talks for 2 to 3 years and the talks had failed every time, maybe nows the end of the road when there needs to be some selling and sacrificing to get some inflow of money.

That’s when it struck me, how were Mallya and his men so confident of the FDI?

Just making casual conversation, I spoke with my friends:

Me: Boys! I gotta theory,

Me: Maybe, Mallya’s deal with either Heineken or Diageo took some serious turn and he got some prospects of cash, then with his charisma he cast a spell on the govt to pass the FDI, the govt is anyway in favor of the brave and the rich, so with pranav da gone, and chidu taking over finance ministry, Mallya had a chance. Chindu is anyway too close to the banks, his family or extended started 4 banks in tamil nadu right? So maybe Mallya worked closely with Chidu, Chaudhary and a few other bank and govt guys to convince them that if the FDI was passed he would get all the money he needed to make his kingfisher fly again, and maybe get a bit more.  

Me: Andddd… with the FDI passed, he doesn’t have to make deals with both Heineken and Diageo, maybe that’s why he’s stalling the Heineken deal.. lets see.. its just a theory :D plus.. you should see his tweets on FDI :P 

Friend: But It’s a tough deciesen for anyone to buy shares in a company with 7k crore in debt.

Me: dude! Anyone would buy once the govt is out of the way.. as in FDI is passed.. I know I would

Friend:  dude.. KFA shares are at 16 rupees or something.. :P 

Me: lol.. yeah I know.. ok heres the time for my ~serious statement making face~ I don’t buy shares for money dude.. I buy shares for my share. ~hunk look~

Friend: lol :P die.. its end game for Mallya dude.. hes gonna lose the dominant role in UB and US and even if he gets investors (fat chance) its gonna be pretty much the same on KFA.. and its all too famous that hes too hard to work when hes not the boss.

Me: hmmm…

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So, the wide spread opinion about Mallya is that much has been ruined and the only way to keep his head afloat is to sell off everything and just be a pawn. Well, that’s ridicules.

Now, many people might not like him, his extravaganza or his business, people might call him an opportunist or even arrogant. I have members in my own family circles that don’t like him because he made money from the liquor that ruined so many families. Well, We can blame the Indian conservatives for that.  

 

Speaking on Mallya, we all know who Vijay Mallya is; hes a rock star! How many Indians decided to buy an F1 team and name it after India? How many Indians decided to buy Tipu Sultan’s sword for 505,250 pounds? And who made sure India didn’t cut a sorry figure when we couldn’t stop the auctioning of Gandhi’s belongings in 2009?? Mallya. 

There might be a lot of reasons to pull down Mallya and beat on him when hes low, but hes really a man of the riches who also means well. He doesn’t just want to be and feel rich alone; he wanted all of India to experience the riches. He wanted to give a luxury experience to the ppl of India, maybe that’s where he went wrong. When just a simple air travel is considered luxury in our country... maybe he went a little ahead of time to provide luxury to everyone in the country. 

Ok.. where does he go from now? And what do I see for him?

It’s simple, the FDI was the last hurdle and now that hes beyond that, he should be clean. He just needs to watch out for a few months and then with his charm and elegant arrogance it would be no time before people joined him in catapulting the broken bird back in the air. 

I believe the King of Good Times has proved it that he has no problems being the Baron at Bad Times… And to all those in strikes and literally being a pain in his ass... you better switch sides before hes rich again