KUUMAR SHYAM (DUBAI)
Entrepreneur Rajan Lall left everything at the age of 53, came to Dubai and started from scratch in the year 2000. Twenty-five years later, he is celebrating the launch of his book "I Did It My Way" in which he talks about his journey, as he spoke to Aletihad sitting in his villa on the Palm Jumeirah hours before a mega launch party on a beach with many heavyweights from the business and film fraternity in attendance.
Among the film personalities was Rakesh Roshan, who described himself as "a family friend" of Lall and also shared some commonalities. Both said, in separate interactions with Aletihad, that Dubai gives them a sense of security, especially when they need it the most.
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"I had a successful business in partnership with others but I got betrayed, which is a long story, but as a result of that, the tax officials and even the underworld started hounding me, so I came here and started from a place like Ajman," says Lall with all modesty.
Though Lall's primary occupation has been his business, he has been one of those who work with India's film industry from a peripheral view – like an outsider looking inside or associated with ancillary services such as dubbing.
"I was passionate about the industry and was friends with people who I highly respect and learnt a lot of life lessons from; people such as Sunil Dutt, Shatrughan Singh... [old superstars of Bollywood in the 1970s era]. So when I came to Dubai, and entertain friends, people would marvel and ask me to write a book... after four years amid our hectic schedules, it has become a reality," says Lall, while sharing the credit to his biographer, film journalist Manju Ramanan.
Inspired by Frank Sinatra's song for the title of the book, which is more than 600 pages with a lot of pictures and gems from history, Lall's book is more of his personal journey and does not make much boast of the fact that he has been a pioneer in dubbing films that were remade from the ones emerging from the southern parts of India, films such as Appu Raja, Roja and many more.
The last-mentioned film Roja was one of the early works of Oscar-winning composer AR Rahman and his foray into the Hindi-language industry became a formality due to Lall, just as the businessman has mentored or given a break to a long line of artists, from his college friend Vinod Mehra to singer Jagjit Singh and even the children of his contemporaries – Sanjay Dutt and Rohan Mehra.
All these memoirs by the son of a chartered accountant (mother) and an insurance executive (father) are part of the book even as Lall focused on his business of collar interlining in India to making cloth hangers and plastic pails for paint products in Dubai, and now expanded to many more countries.