BL 25

A small boast. Business Line born near about midnight, January 24, 1994 in Chennai. K.Venugopal, R. Vijayaraghavan and Ashok Reddy rolled out the first edition from the presses without a dummy run. It happened amid doubts. Insiders and outsiders gave it a few months of living. Today January 24, 2018 it is around and on January 25, 2018 it will touch 25. For about a year Viji (no more) and K. Venugopal (me always addressed him Sir and it will be so always), dreamt of BL  as most in Kasturi & Sons, smirked. At the first meeting the entire board plus Viji, R. Krishnan of New Delhi bureau and me talked of it. Me came out amused as one did not know where anything was heading. Second meeting had a crowd of four: Sir, Viji, Krishnan and me. We backed selves. None gave us a chance. Viji left in about three months after launch, Krishnan said Bye a couple of years after, me remained till retirement in 2007. Sir is out of it .... almost forgotten .... and unlike Narayana Murthy of Infosys and Ratan Tata has no intentions of coming back. Some say he has no chance. Okay. He was always Executive Editor with the imprint line ever reading N.Ram, Editor. Wikipedia shows a circulation of about 1. 17 lakh. If the reader asks me how was it, the answer will always be Fun.  Thanks Sir, for that. Over to the readers.....