Lifestyle and times of Yash Birla

ON A PRAYER
Yash Birla with Vishwaveer Singh
Shobhaa De Books, Penguin
265 pages; Rs 599

Yash Birla's business is a mess: his companies are mired in losses, investors lost interest in his stock ages ago, and some depositors have complained of losing money. In the midst of all this comes On a Prayer, Mr Birla's life story. The jacket promises it to be the tale of a "man who overcomes one of life's toughest hurdles and lives to tell the tale". But if you start looking in the book for Mr Birla's version of how things came to such a pass, you are likely to be disappointed.
 

It might help to realise that Mr Birla's public persona is less about business - it is more about lifestyle: rippling muscles (he would win the Mr Marwari contest hands down), high fashion and the good life. Some years ago, he even hired an agent to position him as the next Richard Branson or Vijay Mallya (the latter's troubles with Kingfisher Airlines hadn't started at that time). Thus, of the book's 265 pages, only about 50 are on business - the story of his initial years in business. On a Prayer is actually about Mr Birla's bonds with the people around him. To his credit, Mr Birla tells the stories with candour and subtle wit. At a time when businessmen are fiercely protective about their private lives, it is difficult to feel cold about Mr Birla after reading the book.

His great-grandfather was Rameshwar Das Birla, a confidant of Mahatma Gandhi. Whenever the great man travelled to Mumbai, he stayed at Birla House. (Mr Birla owns a collection of his letters and pictures.) His grandfather, Gajanan Birla, had left the family and renounced all claims to the Birla fortune when he took a second wife and settled down in Kolkata. The story goes that Gajanan Birla once came down with typhoid and was sent to Mussoorie to recuperate. There he met and fell in love with one Sumitra Devi. Though it was considered a grave loss of face in traditional households, Rameshwar Das Birla and his wife ensured that this did not diminish the stature of Gajanan Birla's first wife and Yash Birla's grandmother. Gajanan Birla, he discloses, never formally divorced his grandmother and would meet her whenever he came to Mumbai.

It was from his grandmother that Mr Birla was introduced to religion. Over the years, it has morphed into extreme religiosity. A tattoo on his humungous right arm has Krishna's eyes, peacock's feather and Shiva's trident, while another on the left arm says "Om". A third tattoo, on his back, just under his neck, shows a devi. The book contains pictures of Mr Birla meditating with his wife, Avanti, and children at a couple of places in the high Himalayas. It even mentions his visits to an old woman with a Ouija board in order to connect with his mother's soul.

Birla House, spread over two acres in Malabar Hill, was by all accounts a traditional household. Mr Birla recounts that when his older sister, Sujata, was born, his great-grandmother walked away from the delivery room and refused to come out of her room for three days. In contrast, when he was born, the grandmother beat a steel thali (plate) with a belan (rolling pin) to announce his arrival to one and all. She then wrote "Om" with a tigress' milk, procured stealthily from the jungles of Madhya Pradesh, on his lips.

Mr Birla had to abandon his studies and rush to India in 1990 when his father (Ashok Birla), mother (Sunanda) and sister (Sujata was married to Jay Mehta, who subsequently married popular actor Juhi Chawla) died in an air crash in Bangalore. In the initial days, Aditya Birla (Kumar Mangalam Birla's father and Ashok Birla's cousin) looked after the business. Then Priyamvada Birla stepped in. Her husband, Madhav Prasad Birla, was his granduncle (Gajanan's brother). Though everybody knew she ran the business from Kolkata, she told Mr Birla that his granduncle's concurrence was needed. She took Mr Birla for a meeting with her husband in a Mumbai hospital. The ailing granduncle could barely mumble and only Priyamvada could decipher what he said. Madhav Prasad had a fetish for crew cuts and hated people with a moustache (Ashok Birla had one) and beard. Before entering the room, Priyamvada took Mr Birla to the bathroom and made him settle his hair with water. Of course, the granduncle offered to help, provided Aditya Birla was moved out.

Mr Birla has always maintained that the people sent over by her grandaunt actually set the business back by a few years. In this book, he provides more evidence of that. Her "need for complete power over us, to treat us like vassals, instead of equal relatives, was irritating me". He also accepts that his parents had always disregarded her. But that's not the complete narrative. In 2004, Priyamvada died and left her Rs 5,000-crore estate to her accountant, R S Lodha. Mr Birla contested the will on the grounds that they were an undivided Hindu family and he was a natural heir of the childless widow. The undivided Birla family, the Lodhas said, was a myth and, thus, Mr Birla had no claim on his grandaunt's estate. The matter is pending in the courts.

It may be incomplete in this aspect, but On a Prayer is somewhat honest. You can't take that away from Mr Birla.