Fugitive Vijay Mallya’s Son Weds, Lalit Modi, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw in Attendance, Indian Government Failure at Display.
Fugitive. The Fugitive, it was a fantastic action movie as well, I remember seeing it on TV, my first ever English movie, which made me a fan of Harrison Ford ever since. No doubt, it is the antithetical, charismatic, detached heroes such as these that have always been the biggest draw in cinema. Paul Newman made his entire career playing characters like these.
Real life examples of fugitive celebrities
So it is doubly understandable that why the newspaper, media world goes haywire when they find a breaking news story that involves a plot and character like this. You have the case of the real life war-hero turned newspaper tycoon Robert Maxwell who died mysteriously in scandalous circumstances, the same man who once rivaled Rupert Murdoch.
You have the similar case of Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire that was once touted as a modern day Jay Gatsby by Vanity Fair magazine, the eponymous F Scott Fitzgerald protagonist and the list goes on, these are two very notable examples.
India does not have a shortage of conmen or billionaires either, we cater to the needs of the world with a population which is the highest in the world. But among this category, we have only one man whose name has become a literal slang for elusive flamboyance and high living, it has been quite a while since he has been in the news but without further ado, the name of the man being talked about is Vijay Mallya.
Why Vijay Mallya has been in the public imagination for so long
The son of a liquor baron, Vijay Mallya was the proverbial kid born with a literal silver spoon in his mouth, who inherited the 19000 crore worth United Breweries kingdom from his father back in 1983. Vijay like many other such filthily rich kids made a real splash in the business world when he introduced the Kingfisher airlines in 2003, after which he never looked back.
Airlines were always a luxury to the middle class, but the fact that the luxury element was incorporated into a practical budget for the middle class customers, shows us two things- that Vijay Mallya was not only for show, he had substance and most importantly, he had a far seeing business sense.
Then came up the Kingfisher Calendar girls photo shoot, the Kingfisher Villa which was publicized so well in the market, with the exactitude of an adman that Vijay Mallya was officially recognized as the King Of Good Times, if America had Hugh Hefner, India had Vijay Mallya, both men were personifying the wildest dreams of the common public, implementing in reality what was a thought to many. But Hugh knew how far to stretch his luck, he knew he had a lucky streak but he cashed in on it and died on the same streak peacefully.
That is where Vijay Mallya differed, he was to become a real life example of the Latin proverb, auri sacra fames, translated as the accursed hunger for gold. He was after a long spree of borrowing money from banks, now penniless and to add salt to the wound, the amount he owed was 9,000 crore rupees. The good times had now stopped for their king and it was in 2016, he realized that the nation which sustained him for so long was now baying for vengeance.
He had his passport intact and using that legal loophole, he fled to London and has now since been a wanted economic offender, the extradition rules and treaties keep getting prolonged with time, a sore sport for India till date.
What is the latest news worthy thing he has done?
Anyways, he is in the news once again not because he has finally been extradited but because his actor-model son Siddharth Mallya got married to his girlfriend Jasmine in a 14 million dollar mansion in London recently. There were two notable figures that you normally would not imagine in the same sentence- the philanthropic founder of Biocon, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw and a close friend of Mallya, the founder of the Indian Premier League and a similarly wanted economic offender, Lalit Modi.
 The irony is not lost on anyone, and if anyone wanted to know how Jay Gatsby would have thrown a party, this is the closest you will get to know
Move over Leonardo DiCaprio, Siddharth has replaced you now. And maybe the good times are not yet over for the man who taught India how to have the good times.
