Receiving an obituary on the front page of the two most-read Malayalam newspapers, Mathrubhumi and Malayala Manorama, may be the biggest posthumous status symbol in an average Malayali’s life. To fellow Malayalis, it means the person had lived a life of importance.
On Monday, the newspapers were almost full of the coverage of not one but two deaths. The first one was obvious—the passing of Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, a leader for almost half a century of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in Kerala who died of cancer. The second was MM Ramachandran, who had been in the news after being arrested in Dubai in 2015 for alleged financial fraud.
Ramachandran, a Thrissur-born socialite and philanthropist, was founder of the Atlas Jewellery group and was almost universally known to everyone as Atlas Ramachandran. He died at the age of 80 of cardiac arrest while being treated in a Dubai hospital for ailments related to old age.
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His company’s slogan— Janakodikalude Vishwastha Sthapanam (institution trusted by crores of people)— voiced by himself in ads in his own inimitable manner, has been etched in Malayali public memory since the 1990s.
He led a star-crossed life with enough ups and downs to provide material for a Fahadh Faasil movie, including landing himself in jail for about 33 months. He had an iconic status in Kerala that went far beyond his career as a jeweller.
Public persona
There is hardly any Malayali, or an association of Malayalis, in the social and political sphere that has not benefitted in some manner from his largesse.
This is especially true in the Middle East where the Delhi School of Economics graduate and banker-turned-entrepreneur, not too long ago, had most of his more than 50 jewellery stores.
He personified the Malayali fascination for benevolent rich men who can fulfil their myriad fantasies— satirised in a Malayalam movie dialogue as Vedanikuna Kodeeshwaran (bleeding heart millionaire). He used his wealth for diverse purposes— funding avant garde movies, staging entertainment awards and endowing Malayali social groups at home and in the Middle East.
Much of his beneficence stemmed from his yearning to be part of the elite he drew close to— the glitterati including film stars and writers, according to at least three people I spoke to, who knew him for most of his life. He was so eager to be part of the Malayali cultural milieu that he once acted as himself in a slapstick comedy In Ghost House Inn, where the laughs came from him playing on his pronunciation in his ad slogan.
The result was the image of a culture-sensitive Non-Resident Indian businessman. He sported a high-collar silk brocade sherwani in media interviews and had a seat reserved at the high tables when important Indians visited Arab countries. He was the promotion committee chairman of Dubai Shopping Festival and six-year secretary of Dubai Gold and Jewellery Group.
A charmed life that lost its sheen
The son of an ordinary police officer was welcomed into their fold by Dubai’s social elite that had accommodated only a few Malayali entrepreneurs like the richest Malayali ever, MA Yusuf Ali of Lulu Group.
At first glance, he may seem to have lived a charmed life -- running jewellery showrooms alongside hospitals, owning homes across the world and counting auteurs like MT Vasudevan Nair and the late Bharatan among his confidants.
Some of the sheen was lost when he landed himself in jail. The runaway success of his company, aided by its proximity to good locations and easy loans from the banks in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, had kept him in good stead— until he was arrested l in 2015 for not honouring security cheques, Khaleej Times reported in 2017. Details of the case remain sketchy and Ramachandran himself has been wary of opening up, saying it was sub judice (under judicial consideration).
But from his media interviews and news reports after he was released in 2017, it seems that one bank ended his credit facility at short notice when a loan repayment was delayed by a week. The bank had deposited his security cheques worth 34 million dirhams that were dishonoured. This at a time when the annual turnover of Atlas Group was 3.5 billion dirhams, according to the Khaleej Times report.
Ramachandran said in a television interview: “When the crisis struck, there was no money in my account. Since it was a crime to dishonour cheques there, it became a criminal case and I was arrested.”
Business collapse
As the news spread, almost all of the 20-odd banks that lent money to the group deposited their security cheques. Swiftly, the company collapsed. The United Arab Emirates did not have insolvency laws then. Most of his existing assets could not be liquidated. It took two years for him to get bail from an appeals court, and in that time, his business and clout were diminished.
His 50 showrooms, about 20 of them in the UAE mostly on expensive rented property, were shuttered one after another. His chief general manager took leave saying he wanted to go to Sabarimala in Kerala for a pilgrimage, and didn’t return, said Ramachandran. Other general managers soon followed suit and fled the country, he said.
His wife Indira Ramachandran did some firefighting, selling assets like diamonds, a hospital business and homes and other properties that were not part of the litigation.
Coming out of prison, Ramachandran started rebuilding his life from square one, with mixed luck, and had seemingly given up on pursuing power and fame. He still had the affection of ordinary Malayalis for whom he remained an instantly recognisable figure.
And after his death, there was a collective recollection of Ramachandran’s roller-coaster life on social media in Kerala. It may have been his generosity that helped him rise to the top of the obituaries. Yet, his life also served as a cautionary tale about the risks of trying to fulfil one’s sense of vanity through generosity.
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