Watched Mani Ratnam's Guru and I must say it was an enjoyable experience. Guru is purportedly a work of fiction but the parallels with industry icon Dhirubhai Ambani are hard to miss. Starting with being a schoolteacher's son, migrating to Istanbul and working in a gas station to the fitting finale, where Guru addresses shareholders in a cricket stadium. Reminded me of Reliance being the sponsor of the 1987 World Cup, the first time the event was held outside England.

I also appreciated the fact that some of the songs were used to carry forward the narrative and were not just mere fillers. Though in a Mani Ratnam film, usually the songs in themselves are a treat to watch.

What was jarring though was Guru being made out to be a hero. A man of the people who cannot speak English, victimised by an English-speaking elite who wanted to let the old order remain. Helped with a generous dose of Mahatma Gandhi and hints of the prosecutors behaving like British colonists, public opinion had to swing in favour of the 'victim' hemmed in from all sides.

But then a dramatic speech spells success more easily than depicting an industrialist's carrot-and-stick approach to deal with trouble.

I walked home with the satisfaction of having seen a good biopic (or at least resembling) of a contemporary figure (by contemporary here I am alluding to post-independence icons). I racked my brain but could come up with hardly any name when it came to such biopics. Ancient, medieval, Independence movement figures have inspired biopics aplenty, be it in Hindi or regional languages like Tamil, Telugu or Malayalam. Underworld dons too have found their place in the sun including a female don, with Godmother loosely inspired by Santokhben Jadeja.

But offhand I cannot think of any other industrialist or somebody who made his/her name with some daredevil act, or real-life rages-to-riches stories, which inspired a commercial film. The only other name which came to my mind was Iruvar in 1997, again by Mani Ratnam, with Mohanlal's character resembling MGR and Prakash Raj Karunanidhi. And Iruvar turned out to be a box-office dud.

But now Guru's success seems to show, if packaged well and involves a colourful personality, biopics can reap a rich harvest, with the urban multiplex crowd and the overseas market lapping it up.