Devil in Pinstripes

by Ravi Subramanian

  ‘That seems logical. A dented car, involved in an accident will not get a good price. Commonsense. Isn’t it?’ Gowri tried to reason.

  ‘Yes it does. But that’s not the end of it.’ He pulled out three colour printouts from his folder and passed them on to Gowri. ‘These are the pics of the pearl white Toyota Corolla which he sent me yesterday morning.’

  From the pictures it was clear that the car had been involved in a frontal accident and its bonnet had completely crashed. It would cost a fortune to repair the car, notwithstanding the amounts paid by the insurance firms.

  ‘So where is the problem? The car has had an accident. Hence we cannot get a good price. I can’t understand. Am I missing something here?’

  ‘Amit, will you take on from here?’

  ‘Before I begin, let me show you a video.’ Amit switched off the lights in the room and turned on the projector. It was connected to his laptop.

  ‘Will you stop this jazz and tell me without fucking around?’ said an agitated Gowri.

  Amit ignored Gowri’s tirade and fiddled with his laptop. ‘Let me play this for you.’

  The clip came on screen.

  The clipping was of a car yard, where a number of used cars were parked. Amit zeroed in on a pearl white Toyota Corolla. It started from the back of the car, then went around the car to the right, back again, then to the left and slowly moved ahead, finally coming to rest at the front of the car. It was a clumsily shot video. Clearly someone had used a mobile phone to shoot the clipping. After pausing for a moment, the video closed in on the bonnet. It was a sparkling car in mint condition. The video then slowly retracted and the angle tilted downward towards the front number plate. The person who was shooting the video purposely went closer to the number plate and stopped right in front of it. The video lingered on the number plate for some time and then the clip ended. The movie stopped and the last clip was in front of their eyes. It showed a clear shot of the number plate of the car.

  It had the number DL2CAM 0192.

  ‘This is the car in question, right? DL2CAM 0192?’ Amit looked at both Manish and Gowri.

  ‘The problem is that I landed up in the most unexpected of places yesterday. Since I was in Raipur, Manish asked me to visit the yard and do an inspection of the facilities available there and also to do a surprise check on this car. In fact, the visit was scheduled at the last minute because I had some time at hand, and I decided to help Manish.’

  ‘I still don’t understand what the issue is,’ muttered Gowri.

  ‘Either you are naïve Gowri, or you think we are idiots.’ Amit was beginning to get irritated. ‘Can’t you see the picture which Vikas sent Manish?’ Amit pulled it up on the screen. It was a badly damaged Toyota Corolla with its bonnet smashed to smithereens. Amit pulled up the last screen shot of the video again – the image of the bonnet of the car he had shot on his mobile phone. Both the images appeared side by side on the screen.

  ‘Completely different cars!’ Manish looked at Gowri and said.

  ‘What does this show?’ Gowri asked.

  ‘Now don’t be naïve Gowri.’ Amit was back to having some fun.

  ‘Enough mate. Let me explain,’ Manish chipped in.

  ‘Gowri, clearly Vikas has sent me a picture of a different car. He has used the image of a dented car to get an approval to sell a perfect car in mint condition at a lower price. The car in picture would sell for at least Rs 8 lakh. Vikas has clearly struck a deal with a used car dealer. He would sell the car for 8 lakh. The car dealer would only issue a payment of Rs 5.1 lakh to NFS. That would not raise any eyebrows, because Vikas holds my approval. The balance of Rs 2.9 lakh would be pocketed by the used car dealer and Vikas. Apart from this there could be no motivation for him to send a wrong photograph. The right car is parked in the yard, but the photo is of a different car.’

  ‘I suspected it. That’s why I asked Amit to go and do the check without anyone getting wind of it. Unfortunately, the mortgages guy was not in office and Amit had time on his hand. Hence he was able to identify this bastardisation of the process.’

  ‘Look Gowri, Vikas has made a cool profit of Rs 2.9 lakh which he would either pocket in full or share with the others in the chain. This is the way this racket operates.’

  ‘And God only knows how many people up the chain get their cuts in this,’ added Amit, much to Gowri’s irritation.

  ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘We will have to ask Vikas to go. He has been found lying for suspected financial gain. Something which is not tolerated in our organisation. I am sure you would agree.’

  Gowri didn’t say anything.

  ‘Would you want to speak with him and give him the option of resigning?’ Manish asked Gowri. ‘He has a choice. Either resign or face the ignominy of a termination.’

  ‘Why should we even give him the option of resigning? He should be terminated.’ Amit was very vocal about his thoughts.

  ‘I will speak with him,’ Gowri said and got up and headed towards the room, not leaving any scope for Amit’s protest to be discussed. He stopped at the door, turned towards the two of them, ‘What are we doing about Raman Bhaskar? The collections guy in Raipur? Why aren’t we discussing him? He should also be sacked.’

  ‘Ideally, we should have. But Gowri, Raman Bhaskar is on leave. He has been unwell for over fifteen days now. I will investigate his involvement when he comes back.’

  ‘It’s OKAY. He is a good guy. Maybe we should just move him out of collections and spare him with a warning,’ said Gowri.

  ‘But GOWRI . . .’ Manish argued.

  ‘Let’s chat about it offline,’ cut in Gowri and the matter ended there.

  By the evening, Vikas had sent in his resignation. With Gowri’s help, the unrepentant Vikas even found a job for himself. While Gowri had not tolerated unethical behaviour in the past, this was the first time he had helped someone who had committed a fraud to get away lightly. This probably had a lot to do with Amit being involved in the investigations.

  Deed done, Gowri was furious. Vikas was his guy. How the fuck could Manish have used Amit, a novice, someone who had come into their organisation yesterday, to work against Gowri’s guy? He should have at least mentioned this to him. Was his authority waning? He was extremely fidgety and felt let down.

  ‘If only you had mentioned this to me, I would myself have terminated the guy,’ he said to Manish later that evening. ‘Why did you have to ask Amit to do this? You know these bank guys. Now word will spread all around the bank that such things happen in NFS.’

  ‘It just happened that Amit was in Raipur and I casually asked him to find out. Anyway, good that we identified this fraud,’ said Manish as he packed his bags.

  The drama over, towards late evening, just before he left for home, Amit picked up the phone. He had held himself back all through the day. Now, he had to let go. He dialled a number and someone picked up. ‘Hello?’

  ‘In life friend, just remember one thing. If you fuck around with others, others will fuck around with you. You fucked with me and now you are paying the price for that.’

  ‘Nonsense. Who is this?’

  ‘Had you not asked Ratnesh to take an off yesterday when I was in Raipur, he would have kept me occupied throughout the day. I wouldn’t have had any time to investigate this Toyota case. Now see the result. You screw with me, I screw you back . . . and I am known to screw badly my friend . . . and even Gowri cannot save you from me.’ Saying this, he hung up leaving Vikas holding the phone in his hands and the call disconnected tone in his ears. He had clearly taken a panga with the wrong guy. Hadn’t he done this at Gowri’s insistence? Gowri should have protected him. He was now left facing the consequence of following instructions.

  Amit did this with a purpose. He knew that sooner or later, the news of the resignation (or sacking, as people would get to know later) would spread like wildfire. It was hence important to capitalise on this to make his position stronger in the organisation. If p
eople knew that one of Gowri’s favourite was sacked at Amit’s insistence, they would hesitate to take him on. Hence, it was important from his perspective that Vikas knew why he came after him. He knew that in the chaos that would follow, it would become a Gowri v/s Amit kind of battle, and in this background noise, all the reality about Vikas’s misdeeds would get camouflaged. He didn’t want that to happen.

  October 2003

  Chanda’s Woes

  NFS-Mumbai

  Things were happening too fast at NFS. It had only been a few weeks since Amit had come in. Sangeeta moved in and out of her cabin on the corporate floor. She was extremely uncomfortable with Amit sharing her cabin forcibly. She wouldn’t get the required privacy. Even when she was on calls with her family, Amit would not move out of the room. Realisation that he was doing it on purpose didn’t take too much time to dawn on her. He was going all out to irritate her and successfully too. The comfort that she had in her old small cubicle was gone. She went and cribbed to Gowri, but to no avail. What could he have done? Wasn’t he the one who created it?

  Life was galloping rapidly. Never a dull moment for any of them.

  ‘Did you know that Ratnesh is moving as branch manager for a branch in Kolkata?’ Chanda called him on the intercom one day.

  ‘How can he? He is in my business.’

  ‘I don’t know. An announcement on his move has come out.’

  ‘Send it to me.’

  Within seconds a pop-up appeared on Amit’s screen saying that he had an unread mail.

  Amit clicked on it and opened the mail. He read the same twice over.

  Team,

  I am happy to announce the appointment of Ratnesh Jha as Branch Manager, Gariahat Branch, Kolkata with effect from 1 April 2002. Ratnesh joined our team in the mortgages business, about nine months ago and within this short span of time, has built up a great business in Raipur. I am confident that he will do even better in his new role. Ratnesh will report to the Regional Head of East – Somesh Kikani.

  Regards,

  Gowri

  ‘What the heck?’ he thought to himself and called back Chanda. ‘What nonsense is this?’ he said as soon as Chanda picked up the phone.

  ‘I don’t know. Apparently he makes all these decisions here. It is an accepted norm.’

  ‘Who makes these acceptable?’

  ‘Don’t know. But that’s the way it has been here.’

  ‘OKAY, let me talk to him,’ and he kept the phone down. He thought for a while and then turned towards his laptop and started typing a mail.

  Dear Gowri,

  I just got to know that Ratnesh has been moved from his role with the Mortgages business in Raipur. Ratnesh is a good guy and I am very happy for him. I wish him all the best as he takes on the new role. However, at this point in time, I would like to make certain things very clear to you:

  This is the last move in the Mortgages team which has happened without my concurrence.

  All promotions, salary corrections, increments, etc., in the Mortgages team will be done by me.

  All future moves which concern anyone in Mortgages need my prior approval.

  Please disengage yourself from people-related issues in my business. I thank you for your support so far. I will call upon you for help and support in case a need were to arise.

  Regards,

  Amit

  Within the next five seconds there was a pop-up on his screen, which read ‘one new message’. He clicked on it. It was from Gowri. He had replied on his earlier message.

  Dude,

  We need to talk.

  Gowri

  Amit was quite worked up. He didn’t like such a casual retort to his serious mail. He was pissed. He was in no mood to let this up.

  Gowri,

  I have nothing further to discuss. If you disagree, I would rather get HR and Hari involved. Please let me know.

  Regards,

  Amit

  Amit had started to bark and niggle. Within forty-five seconds Gowri barged into the room. ‘What is your problem dude?’

  ‘As in?’

  ‘Why can’t you mind your own business and be happy with it?’

  ‘That’s precisely my question?’

  ‘Look dude, enough of fun OKAY. I run the branches the way I want to. Nobody has asked me any questions in the past. I don’t . . .’ Trrng Trrng . . . Amit’s phone rang. It was from Chanda. He decided to pick it up.

  ‘Hi!’

  ‘Was speaking to Anamika. She is moving to Delhi. They are moving Kirpal in her place as a branch manager to Ludhiana.’ Anamika was the branch manager for NFS in Ludhiana and Kirpal was the mortgage sales guy in Ambala. The latter was in Amit’s chain of command.

  ‘What?’ Amit shook his head in disgust and walked out of the room to avoid any sensitive conversations in front of Gowri.

  Gowri remained in Amit’s shared room. He was furious at the response he got from Amit. He had to close this issue today. Amit was talking on the phone and taking his own time. ‘I will move from here only when I fix the problem,’ said Gowri to himself and sat down on the chair that was on the same side of the table where Amit would normally sit.

  He looked around the room. There were a few trophies in the room. A few pictures, almost all of them of Sangeeta. She had not cleared all her stuff from the room. Many of them had Gowri in them. His gaze continued to roam and then skipped to the other side of the room. In transitioning, they skipped over the screen of Amit’s laptop. The screen was open and on the screen was a mail from Gowri. The same mail which announced Ratnesh’s move. The mail, he could see, was forwarded from Chanda’s ID. How stupid of him for not having realised? There was a mole in the house. Chanda was feeding him information against Gowri. He was now even more furious. Even more pissed at himself. Shouldn’t he have seen this coming? He had to now deal with Chanda more than anyone else.

  Sangeeta had many a time bitched to him about Chanda, but he had ignored her whines. What upset him was that he should have proactively seen this coming. But somehow Chanda was in his blind spot.

  ‘OKAY, I will call you. He is in my room,’ and Amit walked back into the room.

  ‘Yes Gowri? What were you saying?’

  ‘No, it’s fine Amit. We will talk later. And he walked out towards his cabin, leaving Amit wondering about the sudden change in mood.

  Back in his room, Gowri was in a very pensive mood, when a knock on his door woke him up from his knitted eyebrows and staring into one insignificant spot on his table expression.

  ‘Gowri, I came to give you the MI which you asked for.’ It was Chanda who had come up.

  ‘Give it to Suzanna. I will take it from her.’

  ‘Okay. Let me know if you need anything.’

  ‘Hmm . . .’ something was wrong. She could sense it. But he was not saying anything. She quietly walked back to her desk.

  Gowri buzzed Suzanna and asked her to get Sangeeta to come in.

  ‘Gowri, she is on her market visits, will be in office in about twenty minutes. By the way, Karen called. Hari was asking for the final draft of the presentation to be made to the NYB advisory board tomorrow.’

  ‘What time is my presentation scheduled?’

  ‘9 a.m.’

  ‘Okay, ask my team to be present. All of them need to attend this meeting. All my direct reports (DR). Tell them to wear formals.

  Ties are compulsory.’

  ‘Okay Gowri.’ And she turned to leave.

  ‘Wait.’ She stopped. ‘Give me a printout of the list of people who will be there. I will tell you who all I want there.’

  She stepped out and was back in a minute with a printout of a list of Gowri’s DRs and handed it to him. It was a list of the core members of his team. Gowri looked through it. After a minute of intent gazing, he stretched his hand, picked out a sharpened pencil from the pen stand, ran it across a name on the list and handed it back to Suzanna. Suzanna looked at it and then looked at Gowri. She couldn’t believe her eyes bu
t then realised that it was time for her to leave. Only one name was stuck off. Chanda Sharma was not to attend the next day’s presentation with the advisory board. Gowri had struck her name off.

  An hour later, Suzanna sent out a mail to the team instructing them to be a part of the morning meeting with the advisory board . . . to all except Chanda. Chanda got to know about it when she reached office the next day at 9.15 a.m., and found everyone from her team missing. They were all at the presentation which had begun fifteen minutes ago. She tried asking around, but didn’t get any answers.

  Over the next few days instructions went out to the team, through Sangeeta that interactions with Chanda needed to be kept to the bare minimum and only on a need basis. Gowri was cutting down her access to information, which in a way could be used against him. Her name got dropped off all MISs which were circulated to the branch managers. Amit had earlier asked Gowri to stop all MI related to mortgages from being circulated from his office. Gowri did not heed his advice. He just dropped Chanda from the mailing list. The people down the line were in any case aligned to him. The branch managers owed their careers to Gowri and hence were very careful and circumspect in their dealing with Amit and Chanda. This suited Gowri.

  These tactics became a regular practice. As Gowri sat on his king-size chair and languorously crossed his legs, he realised that he had discovered a goldmine. The secret to dealing with Amit was right in front of him – Chanda. She was his trump card. As long as Chanda’s career and self-esteem was at stake and under threat, Amit would behave well towards him. The belligerence that Amit displayed had a lot to do with Chanda not being impacted. If he somehow visibly demonstrates to Amit that his attitude towards Gowri would impact Chanda, Amit would be under control. Why didn’t he think of it earlier?