Lamenting loss of RK Studios, apathy of Kapoor khandaan

It was February 8, 2009. The auditorium at ISB-Hyderabad where the Second Asian Invitational Conference on Family Business was underway, was packed to the brim.  

Prof SK Chakraborty of IIM-Kolkata, a doyen among management gurus, dressed in starched-white dhoti and kurta delivered the keynote address. “There can be no fruits without roots” was a key message from the soft-spoken professor.  

His chided the suited-booted audience on the responsibilities of a family and its business to preserve values and ethics, which are the ‘roots’ of family business management.  

The recent news of the sale of RK Studios in Chembur, Mumbai, holds a mirror to generations of family business companies who are selling out, diluting, giving up, erasing and disengaging themselves from the roots that nurtured and nourished them.  

It is a family decision. Surely, it makes business sense to them. Extrapolating the words of late Prof Chakraborty (who passed away in 2018), the family is cutting their roots, slashing business ties and deleting an entire ecology of memories that go beyond their immediate family members and covers innumerable stakeholders. In case of the Kapoor family, even a large comity of nations. It’s time to question: Do roots matter?   

Prithviraj Kapoor, a legend in his lifetime and his star-struck sons — Raj, Shammi and Shashi — are icons belonging to every Indian who flocked to cinema halls and fell in love with Hindi films.  

Since 1940s, songs the Kapoors lip-synced on screen, their comic antics, laughter and tears became a part and parcel of lives of millions of Hindi film-goers. Raj Kapoor’s baggy trousers, tucked-in shirt and rolled-up sleeves became the sartorial style for generations.   

The Kapoor khandaan grew like the banyan tree. Roots spreading thick and deep into the Bollywood ecosystem where actors, actresses, singers, song-dialogue writers, musicians, cameramen, sound-lights-set designers and their armies of assistants become part of a ‘reel’ world creating ‘real’ illusions. This was cinema as passion, profession, industry and propaganda.  

This is not a discourse on the films of the RK banner — how romantic (Barsaat, Aan, Bobby), how progressive (Boot Polish, Shree 420, Jaagte Raho) or how stereotypical (Ram Teri Ganga Maili) or how significant is the impact of these trend-setting films and the role played by RK Studios as an authentic business entity, organically growing out of Bombay.  

As with most family businesses, multiple generations get involved in film production and distribution. This is how business legacies take root.  

“Your legacy is your identity.” These words echo in family business management classes. “Your heritage is your brand,” is another timeless gem. How come the supremely successful Kapoor khandaan, filled with heroes and heroines who continue to rock our sub-continent and diaspora in the 21st century, have ignored these truisms? Are they now a global elite for whom such home-grown desi legacies do not matter? At the same time, a generation of Kapoors is seen endorsing global heritage-brands where legacy commands a premium.  

The studio sale is final, there can be no going back; the Kapoor khandaan has walked away from a glorious legacy, their own heritage. As a globalizing nation, we should ask: In families, and in businesses, are we now disregarding, disowning and devaluing relationships that go back in time and geography?  

One probable explanation to the Kapoor decision, could lie in the post-Partition Punjabi ethic that really does not care for such nuances. Punjabis say it with a shrug, “ki farak painda hai”. What difference does it make if the Kapoors let go of the RK Studios?  

The Bollywood elite (Bachchans, Khans, Johars, Roshans) continue to dominate our cultural, social, business and entertainment landscape. What is this global elite doing for the cities they live in, for a nation which worships their films, for youngsters desperately-seeking-role models, searching for inspiration rooted in our land. The poetics of globalization are paradoxical and tragic.  

In Mera Naam Joker, Raj Kapoor laments: “Jaane kahan gaye voh din / kehte the teri raah mein / nazaron ko hum bichayenge.” Now RK Studios is disappearing from our ‘nazaron’, our sights. It is an erasure for sure. Welcome to a new and rootless India.  

Author is a journalist, researcher, writer, and communications consultant