A no retake event

Ever wondered about the man behind most of your favourite music albums? Gulshan Kumar, born today, set the foundation of the music label. His life started with assisting his father in selling fruit juice, which later changed from selling movie cassettes to finally making those!

He is technically responsible for all the remakes we get today; Source: Wikipedia

Who does not know T-Series? Trapped in controversies and meme culture, it is a company vastly known for its monopoly over Bollywood. From PewDiePie's sub wars to the company's dicey history of its founder, the company has come a long way through history to make itself the biggest dealer numbering 2500 for all things audio.

You might know about the PewDiePie thing, but that was just a meme. The real history lies underneath the company's founder, Gulshan Kumar.

A typical zero to hero story, Gulshan Kumar was the son of a fruit juice vendor in Delhi. From an early age, instead of burying his head in books, he began helping his father.

Gulshan was a huge devotee of Shri Shiv Ji and Devi Parvati and ironically, his death would also be close to where his heart lay.

His turning point would come when his family acquired a small shop full of cassettes and records. From then onwards, began the legacy of "Super Cassettes Industries," which was an audio cassette operation started by Gulshan later on. With his shrewd mind and cruel business tactics, he outgrew to a music production company in Noida.

His co-workers often said that he was a man who would gift you anything when he needed you, but would fire you when you were not useful to him anymore.

Lal Dupatta Malmal Ka and Aashiqui were the first two big hits produced by Gulshan. Of course, more came by later but by then T-series had become a giant in Bollywood. Producing various films and making them hits all around. In the midst of all this though, the underworld was also working its way to Gulshan, with threats and protection money and such. They were coercing the T-series founder to take out more money seeing how his company was profiting. This was in the 80s where Bollywood was known for its patronage of the underworld echelons.

Gulshan was under police protection, however his guard at that time was on sick leave. Co-incidence or?

Ramesh Taurani had a falling out with Gulshan. Why would he not? They were business rivals. So he decided to remove his competitor permanently. On the other side of the call, Dawood Ibrahim, the top boss, was also not very pleased with how Gulshan was ignoring him. Two people with the same motive met, and decided that his time was over.

Sixteen bullets shot, just a few meters away from his home, it was a death which would put to shame, the films T-series produces nowadays.

His death would not halt the progress of the company, but it would send a message to everyone in Bollywood of what was going on underneath the carpet. Hint: it was all red.

Gulshan Kumar was a man of business, but unfortunately, his business intuition had failed him when it was needed the most.