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In Gulshan Kumar's scheme of things, neither music directors nor playback singers are indispensable

When asked him what his three children were doing, Gulshan looked dubious. Which school did his son go to? Gulshan couldn't remember the name. His horrified sister-in-law, who had apparently been listening in on the conversation from her adjoining bedroom, rushed in to inform him that the boy was actually in college. Gulshan looked mildly surprised by this revelation.

Of course, he didn't know which college it was; it was his embarrassed sister-in-law who disclosed that Gulshan's son and heir went to Mithibai College in Bombay.

And what about his daughters? Which school did they go to? Again, Gulshan looked to his sister-in-law for assistance. Arya Vidya Mandir, she offered helpfully.

And which classes were they in? Gulshan looked at his sister-in-law again, but this time that fount of information failed him. No, she didn't know either.

But how come Gulshan didn't know even the names of the school and college his three children were studying in? Didn't he spend any time with them?

Of course, he did, came the indignant reply.

So. What did they talk about when they were together?

"Hum unke saath dharm ki baatein karte hain."

And what aspect of "dharm" did he discuss with his children?

"Ji, main unke saath Shivji ke bare mein baat karta hoon."

What about Shivji?

By now, Gulshan is visibly uncomfortable with the line the questioning is taking, and he unilaterally decides to change the subject. " Aap koi aur baat ki jiye," he says, shortly.

Because he is so brash, so thrusting and yes, quite so vulgar, it is often easy to forget just how influential Gulshan Kumar has been in the movie and music business.

His personal achievements are stupendous enough -- not too many fruit-juicewallahs become movie moguls, pirate kings and music millionaires -- But there are also the changes he has effected in the industries he dominates.

This is most true of the music business. In 1978-79, when Gulshan first entered the fray (the period during which he now denies he was a pirate). The Indian recorded music industry was dominated by two majors, the pachydermal Gramophone Company and the slapdash Polydor (later Music India). Overpriced records that nobody wanted to buy (at least partly because the hardware was scarce in the Indian market) languished on the shelves while cassettes made by the majors were not only in short supply (given the size of the market) but were also expensive (the real cost of music software is one of the few things to have gone down over the last 20 years). A handful of playback singers (the Mangeshkar sisters, Kishore Kumar, etc) sang for a small clique of music directors and only film music sold.

The new breed of entrepreneurs -- led by Gulshan -- changed all that. They broke the Mangeshkar monopoly and flood the market with scores of singers whom nobody had ever heard of. They dragged down cassette prices and skipped the record shop route to encourage panwallahs and grocers to sell their product. In the process, they quadrupled the size of the market.

Gulshan has done something similar to the movie business. Bollywood's unwritten rules say that a movie needs three things to be a hit -- a great script, stars and a smart director. Gulshan Kumar has trampled all over the those rules and laughed all the way to the safe deposit box.

His first big hit, Aashiqui, had a banal-young-love script and starred two unknowns, Rahul Roy and Anu Aggarwal. The sceptics gave the credits to the director, Mahesh Bhatt, but Bhatt and Roy were unable to repeat the Aashiqui success. On the other hand, Gulshan Kumar turned the execrable Bewafa Sanam into a huge hit despite the casting of his brother Krishan and Gulshan's own direction.

Part of the secret lies in the attention paid to music. In Gulshan Kumar's scheme of things, neither music directors nor playback singers are indispensable. He launched Kumar Sanu but dropped him when he became too troublesome. He promoted music directors Nadeem-Shravan and then proved that he didn't need them.

It was Gulshan who invented the concept of the music bank where tunes would be stored till he found a movie or a record where he could use them.

Seen in perspective, these are significant achievements. In few other industries can one individual have had so much influence. Moreover, the sectors that he has transformed are the so-called "sunrise" sectors of the 1990s' -- video movies, home entertainment, prerecorded music, etc.

And yet, this is not how this was supposed to have happened. The brave new world of yuppie India celebrated in the pages of the financial press, is one where highly-paid MBAs, who work for professionally managed corporations, raise money from financial institutions, sign foreign collaborations and then commission IMRB or MARG to assess the size of the market.

Gulshan Kumar has no place in this world. He speaks broken English, runs his business like alala, is pathologically secretive about numbers, has little commitment to quality, is known to demand servility from his employees while himself genuflecting towards anybody in power, plays fast and loose with the facts (he even gave three different years of birth during the interviews for this story), is happiest dealing in cash and exists in that netherworld at the edges of the law.

But perhaps, Gulshan is far more representative of the emerging India of the 1990s than the yuppies and the MBAs, Because nobody had ever told him how things were supposed to be done, he picked up his wisdom from the streets. His reference points were his neighbours, not case studies in management journals. And his lack of upper-middle-class inhibitions ensured that he did not mind bending the rules when necessary or grovelling a little if it helped get his work done.

The music industry now says that Gulshan's heyday is past; that in the professionalised 1990s, his lack of management expertise will finally show up. Perhaps, but given his past performance, don't be too surprised if long after the Gramophone Company has been forgotten, there is still a Gulshan Kumar. Complete with red bow-tie, white terylene ensemble and unshaven visage. As he says unselfconsciously: "Shivji wants me to be successful."

And given how far he's got, who's to say that he's wrong?

Kind courtesy: Sunday magazine

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