Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman, Part 2
Shahrukh Khan has announced that he will star in a sequel of the movie Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman. The new movie will be based on Satyam founder Ramalinga Raju and will narrate the story from Raju’s point of view. Nana Patekar will play the angry Narayan Murthy.
In a press conference yesterday, SRK said, “Raju is the quintessential new age Bollywood hero – taking risks and building an empire. The shareholders are just collateral damage like the thousands of extras massacred by Aamir Khan in Ghajini.”
Reactions from other quarters seem to suggest that SRK may well be right. In the past few days, outrage from the self-appointed morality police has quieted down. Several corporate honchos and others connected with the case have spoken to us (anonymously) about their true feelings on this issue.
An Indian business tycoon who was close to the Rajus told us, “There is just too much inflation. How can we billionaire promoters survive without fraud? Real estate prices were going through the roof. Raju wanted to buy a Rs. 125 crore estate but the price rose to Rs. 400 crore. What other choice did he have? I fully empathize with what he did.”
Another person we randomly picked off the street (like most industry experts are chosen by TV news channels) in Hyderabad also blamed inflation, “Earlier you had to pay only Rs. 3-4 crore dowry in Andhra. But with all this inflation, now the dowry range is 15-20 crores. I would have done the same thing as Mr. Raju.”
Speaking with reporters at the press conference with SRK, Director Aziz Mirza said, “I have been researching the facts of this case. Not many people know that there is a foreign hand in this conspiracy against corporate India. Satyam had invested money with Bernie Madoff and had received falsified statements regarding the value of their investments. That is why assets on their balance sheet were more than the actual money they had. We will show you the true story in our movie.”
In related news, it was announced that Ramalinga Raju has been conferred the distinguished Martin Luther King award for “…truly demonstrating that whether it’s Jeff Skilling or Takafumi Horie or Ramalinga Raju, we may differ in the color of our skin but not in the content of our character.”
Lest people forget the plight of shareholders and employees, a Satyam engineer recently started a petition urging the government to provide a bailout for the beleaguered company. “My wedding and dowry were all finalized but now everything is on hold. The girl’s family is threatening to back out because I may be out of a job. There are many others like me. The government has to help us,” he said, almost in tears.