Flyting too high – Flying a little too low

There are two things I see every day:

1.       The standoff between KFA and its employees on the overdue payment of salaries in the daily newspaper.

2.       A huge poster of Siddharth Mallya smiling sheepishly out of a ‘Hunt for Kingfisher Calendar Girl’ poster.

KFA (Kingfisher Airlines) was a birthday gift from Vijay Mallya to his son Siddharth. And he has managed to do what every kid in the block would do with his birthday gift- flaunt it to his friends, play with it and then utterly bored let it rot in a corner. The interesting fact in this case being that both father and son happily played with it and then decided to take a vacation on some exotic island.

Vijay Mallya, without any doubt, is quite an icon. With his flashy lifestyle, Nirma washed white jackets and scantily clad girls giggling around him, he has been able to do what no Aditya Birla or a Ratan Tata could ever achieve – gain a paparazzi. And his son followed right into the big and hairy footsteps of his father by dating a super model actress and going right ahead and kissing her during an IPL match. Now this begs me to reminisce the news I read a couple of years ago. Remember ‘Operation Majnu’ in U.P. where girls and boys were rounded up by police and beaten up for being ‘indecent’. I am sure some policemen watching that match might have realized that the suave Mr. Mallya Jr. is quite some ‘Majnu’ himself.

I must tell you that I, along with a lot of 20s something sincerely revere Mr. Mallya Sr. for his contribution to the liquor industry by making some of the cheapest brands in alcohol and making all of us falling in love with the Kingfisher bird on their logo. Some of us even went ahead and sang songs of merriment which went like ‘Oo La La La La Le E O’ (Or was It.. Le Le Lo!). We were hurray to the king of good times till he was serving us some cheap and nice beer. But then one day, probably Lord Brahma appeared in Mr. Mallya’s dreams and he got all sober and started buying air planes. The next day to reaffirm his devotion he bought some cars and called them ‘Force India’. And just the other day he bought a cricket team with some cheerleaders and pit girls who came free of cost because Virat Kohli was playing for them.

In the mean time, when he was busy buying all these stuffed toys for himself and his son, he forgot that he had also hired a staff that he has to pay. It was a sad day when the wife of one of his employee committed suicide after the KFA fiasco due to enormous economic constraints. It was sadder that Mallya Jr. decided to tweet about his bikini volleyball match on the same day. I am sure that the combined cost of travel and living expenses of father-son duo would have been sufficient to feed that family for atleast a month. But obviously there is no time to ponder over these facts when there is an F1 race coming.

“No one likes him but everyone wants to live like him,” said one admirer. I agree. Who wouldn’t want to live like him. When you have a personal yacht, a jet and numerous properties all around the world, you would be envied and looked up to. Though today, it is an entirely different situation when the people looking up at him are ones who have not been paid by him for last 7 months. Their condition is desperate. Many had to move their families because they could not afford the expenses. Many had to re-register their kids in different schools. And where is Mr. Mallya all along? You and I can only guess..

 You can enjoy the vacations Mr. Mallya Sr. and Jr. and being citizens of this great nation where the rich remain rich, we know that you will pour Champaign on Kingfisher calendar launch for years to come but remember that that one Champaign could have saved the life of that unfortunate woman whose husband was a little more unfortunate to be employed by you. He lost his job and then his wife. Bad times have just begun I guess. Not for you, obviously.