The life of liquor baron Vijay Mallya in a book

Bangalore: It is post midnight and the clock has struck 12.30. Author K. Giriprakash is fast  asleep in his apartment in Bengaluru. The phone ring wakes him up. A familiar name blinks repeatedly. The caller mostly chooses this time to talk. The calls would sometimes stretch till 2 am! But perhaps that is the only time a man as busy as Vijay Mallya can spare, to give interviews and answer questions.

This particular call is pertaining to a book on Mallya by Giriprakash. Somebody in the publishing world read his article about Mallya in a newspaper on a November day — The rise and fall of a castle in the air, and asked Giriprakash if he could come out with a book on the Kingfisher man. He is happy to do it, he says, picks up his phone and dials Mallya. The busy billionaire doesn’t answer, and picks up his favourite time past midnight to return the call.

The two have known each other for more than a decade, ever since Giriprakash moved from Delhi to Bengaluru and started writing business stories on Mallya’s empire, closely following the man and his many trades, taking his many interviews. The journalist comes straight to the point that it is about a book. “Would you like to participate in it?”

“Let me think about it, send me a mail,” comes Mallya’s reply. The reply comes as a denial for there is another book being written, an autobiography. It would be a conflict of interest, feels Mallya. The publishing house tells him to go ahead with the book, just have Mallya’s response on record.

The journalist begins his work, doing what he does everyday — talking to sources, getting his stories. The process is slow, for he has his day job to do, and deadlines to meet. But two-and-half-years after that November story, his book is out.

With a simple and straightforward title, like a headline of a very long feature — The Vijay Mallya Story. It begins with the death of Vijay Mallya’s father Vittal Mallya, and a few glimpses of his childhood. But the ‘personal’ front is kept to the minimum.

The book dwells at length on the management styles of Vittal and Vijay Mallya, and explores how the father and son differed in their respective styles. In a chapter on Kingfisher, Giriprakash writes about Mallya’s dream of creating the world’s best airline and how the venture failed because of poor business decisions, and ultimately nearly consumed all his group companies.

“It is not an opinion piece, I have presented things as they are. I have been as neutral as possible,” says the author.

Giriprakash has always been an avid reader, but never thought he would write a book one day. So, when opportunity came knocking at his door, he let it in. He is cautious, though, and approaches the work like a journalist. He makes sure everything is on record, and can be substantiated. Foolproofed and crosschecked, like a true reporter.

“It is a collage of events and incidents in Mallya’s life. I may have dramatised it a little to make it interesting. Like the book written on Lakshmi Mittal, Cold Steel, you would feel you were in that conference room when it is a board meeting scene,” says Giriprakash. “But they had Lakshmi Mittal opening up to them. I had no such co-operation.”

No one from Mallya’s group of companies talked to him, but Giriprakash has his years of knowing the man, all his interviews and late night calls, and his ways to find people willing to talk. He has traced Mallya’s life till the day the Diageo deal happened.

Since then, the UB Group chairman has responded to Giriprakash, the journalist, even after saying ‘no’ to Giriprakash, the writer. But he has not yet given a midnight call to tell Giri if he has read the book, or what he thinks of it!