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Devil in Pinstripes

Page 21

by Ravi Subramanian


  There was only one thing on his mind. He wanted to be sure that in Tulsiram’s case, NFS came clean. He had done his research on the case and he was surprised at the allegation made by Tulsiram.

  Back in Mumbai, when the Tulsiram case first blew up, the first thing he had asked for was Tulsiram’s loans statement of accounts. It clearly showed that Tulsiram was not a delinquent customer. He was up-to-date as far as his payments were concerned. In the books of NFS, there were no overdue payments from Tulsiram. Even though Tulsiram had bounced a few of his EMI repayments, he had paid up every single instalment on subsequent follow up by the NFS collection agencies.

  ‘Then why all this noise about not being able to pay three EMIs to NFS?’ he wondered. ‘Probably, Tulsiram’s state of mind caused him to get the name of the finance company wrong,’ he thought as he got into a waiting white Hyundai Accent cab. He also immediately realised that his mind was making its best efforts to console and stop the sickly feeling in his stomach.

  ‘Somajiguda branch,’ he said to the driver, who just nodded. The driver was a regular and hence knew where to go. The drive was a comfortable one as it was relatively early in the morning and there wasn’t much of traffic on the road. He was casually looking out of the car window. Shops were flying past in the reverse direction. Buildings were coming up on both sides of the road. Hoardings were hopping behind. ‘What a city?’ he thought. ‘Why the hell do they screw up the city skyline by putting up hundreds of hoardings? Why doesn’t someone do anything about them?’ he thought even as he compared the hoarding menace to that in Mumbai. City people love to complain about and compare the problems in their city with those of others. ‘Amchi Mumbai has left no stones unturned either. The menace comes with double the force there,’ said his interior monologue.

  Flying past him in the reverse direction were a mix of large metal hoardings and a number of small untidily tied cloth banners. Back in Mumbai, the cloth banners were banned. They were unauthorised. However, nobody ever gives up. Every night, some unscrupulous vendors would put up tens of hundreds of cloth banners in Mumbai . . . across roads, along railway stations, between electric poles, in the market, in every conceivable place, only to be removed the next morning by the municipal corporation. The huge numbers of banners across Hyderabad streets made him feel that maybe the corporation was not as effective in Hyderabad as in Mumbai.

  In the midst of all this, there was one banner which caught his attention. All along the route he would have seen over a hundred of that particular type of banner. It was in Telugu, the local language, and hence he could not make head or tail of it. Every banner had pictures of two individuals on it. One of which was constant in every banner. The second picture changed every two to three kilometres. There was a symbol at the bottom, that looked like an election symbol, making him realise that it was a banner put up by a political party. However, he had no clue of what was written on it. There was something about the banner which gave him an uncomfortable feeling. In fact, there was an eerie sense of familiarity about the banner, but he could not figure out what it related to.

  Victor was waiting for him at the Hyderabad branch of NFS. He was the head of collections for NFS for the state of Andhra Pradesh. Victor had taken over the head of collections role for the province around the same time that Amit moved to his new role in NFS. He was Amit’s man.

  The main door of the branch was locked. Victor led him inside through the back door. The collections team was waiting for him. All of them looked worried. After the initial round of discussions and updates, he stepped into the conference room.

  ‘Show me his file.’ Amit asked for Tulsiram’s loan application set.

  ‘In a moment,’ said Victor as he stepped out of the room. Within minutes he was back in the room with a copy of the customer file. Amit reached out and took it from him. The first sheet of paper in the document set was the application form that Tulsiram had filled. A photograph of Tulsiram was pasted on the application form – Tulsiram in his driver’s uniform, photographed outside the Marriott. Seemed to be a decent chap. A nice photograph is often a positive when you evaluate a loan application form. A pleasant looking photograph often disposes the loan officer favourably towards the applicant.

  ‘There is something very familiar about this guy. I have seen him somewhere,’ thought Amit. ‘Maybe at the Marriott. I have stayed there so many times in the past,’ and he dismissed the thought as he moved on to critically examine the customer file. The salary slip seemed perfect; the bank statements were in order and the verification reports were fine. The entire due diligence process seemed to have been followed. In the normal course something like this would definitely have got approved. So giving him a loan was in line with the policy of NFS. It was not an error. Nobody had committed a mistake in approving a loan for him. As he closed the file, he suddenly chose to have one last look at Tulsiram’s application form. And then he shut the file. Something was nagging him.

  ‘Give me the detailed collections report,’ he said, wanting to see if there was any instance of collection excesses on Tulsiram. He knew that everything was in order; however, he wanted to double check. It was a sensitive case and could blow up anytime. Hadn’t it already?

  While Victor stepped out to get it, Amit walked out to the wash- room. The washroom in the Hyderabad branch was in one corner of the floor – a small niche converted into a washroom, overlooking the main road. It had a small hole in the wall which was a window now . . . it probably would have housed an exhaust fan in the past.

  He managed to squeeze himself into the washroom and looked at the mirror above the wash basin. Age was beginning to show on his face. He splashed a few drops of cold water on his face and looked up again. The water was a relief from the heat that he was facing in his professional life. The tissue box was hung on the left of the mirror. He reached out and pulled one. Beyond the tissue box was this small window, through which he looked out into the street below. He casually looked at the passing cars, the struggling rickshaw puller, the beggar at the traffic signal, and then moved his gaze up to the mall across the street. The mall housed a large Louis Phillipe store. Next to it was a fancy showroom. He could see the front façade where the words ‘SALDI’ were written in bold red, multiple number of times. He tried to guess the brand, but a large banner was blocking his view. Straining his neck, he tried to look over and around it, but couldn’t make out which store it was. He washed his hands still trying to figure out the brand.

  ‘Up to fifty percent sale is not bad. Maybe I should look at it before I leave the city,’ he thought as he turned back. And suddenly, as if hit by lightning, he craned his neck to look back at the road again. There it was. The nagging feeling was not without reason. He hurried back to the room. Victor was already there. He quickly opened the file and turned the papers to get to the application form. He looked at Victor, ‘This guy. This guy . . . what is he doing on the banners there? All the way from the airport to here, I saw this guy’s photographs on banners. They are all over the place. Why? What’s written on those?’ Worry lines conquered his face while the colour drained out of his cheeks.

  Victor’s expression was a give away. He squirmed a bit and said, ‘Amit, I was about to tell you. The opposition party here has taken Tulsiram’s story to town. They have put up posters all over, publicising this suicide, especially in poor localities.’

  ‘What do they say? I can’t make out a word of it. It’s in Telugu.’

  ‘The banners which have been put up by the Telugu Rakshana Party, a local fanatic party, implore people to contact them in case recovery agents were to harass anyone. They have offered to help them deal with the recovery agents. They have put pictures of all their politicians alongside Tulsiram . . . one-by-one. Tulsiram has become a sort of a cult figure for loan defaulters. With elections due in twelve–eighteen months, this seems to be an issue that can be converted into a vote magnet.’

  ‘Goodness me! Have they named us in these banners? What’s th
e impact?’

  ‘Thankfully, not yet. They are quite generic and do not single out any particular bank. It has however impacted our ability to collect. The collection agents have not been able to go into the field to collect from defaulting customers. Last evening, four of our collectors got beaten up. The rest are now reluctant to go and collect. And . . .’ he hesitated.

  ‘And what?’

  ‘This morning before you walked in, six of my agents have resigned. Their families do not want them to be in collections and risk their lives,’ Victor added. Amit was reminded of his mother’s call, the night before he was due to take up the new job. ‘Don’t take it up beta. This is a dirty line,’ her voice echoed in Amit’s head.

  ‘Where will they go? Don’t they need their salaries?’

  ‘That’s not a problem, Amit. The mall mania is taking its toll. All these guys will find jobs in numerous new shopping malls that are opening up. Maybe even at a higher salary. They get to work in a less intimidating environment and an air-conditioned atmosphere. Personal security was never an issue thus far, you see. Now it has become one. It’s normal for families to be concerned and parents stopping their wards from working in collections.’

  ‘That’s bad news.’

  Victor nodded in acceptance. He had a sombre look on his face. ‘Do you think meeting with the higher ups in the police will help? I can meet them today and argue our case,’ asked Amit.

  ‘No, it won’t. This issue has become so big that the government is not going to let it die down so easily. As I said, elections round the corner. The police will not do anything which will attract an adverse reaction from the masses. The police is under their control and will follow their instructions. We must not do anything proactively. In any case they have asked for the name and address of the head of collections for all banks who have doled out loans to Tulsiram. At this point I do not think it will be an issue for us because as far as our records show, he is not a delinquent customer. Why should we go there on our own and make it an issue for ourselves? Fortunately, they have not singled us out, though initially most of the newspapers tried to exploit our MNC status and make us the torch bearers of inappropriate collections practices.’

  ‘Hmmm . . .’ was all that Amit could say.

  After another forty-five minutes of reviewing, Amit was convinced that it was not worth risking aggressive collections in this environment. Not only would it put the entire collections team at risk, it would also put the NFS franchise at risk. The brand would come under the media glare and that was not a good thing. He was also convinced that they were not in the wrong. Their name just happened to be mentioned along with a few others because they had lent money to Tulsiram.

  ‘OKAY,’ he said as he prepared to leave the office to catch a flight back to Mumbai. ‘Tread carefully. Don’t send your collectors out to collect from difficult customers. Lie low for a couple of weeks. We will take a hit on delinquencies and portfolio performance for a month or two. I will sensitise everyone and manage expectations at the management level. We will try and cover up for this month’s performance shortfall when the situation improves. And no media interviews or discussions please. All queries from the media to be directed to the public affairs team in Mumbai. Tell your team too.’

  He got into the car and left for the airport. En route he passed a procession – a long one – wherein people were carrying placards and banners and were screaming at the top of their voices. This time around he recognised the picture. It was none other than Tulsiram. ‘Tulsiram, what did I do to you? You have become such a pain for me,’ thought Amit, even as he felt sorry that the entire family had got wiped out in a span of two nights. ‘Maybe it was good. In any case, they would have struggled without Tulsiram’ was his last thought of justification and consolation before he closed his eyes for a short nap. He couldn’t sleep. The airport was forty-five minutes away.

  He had a disturbed flight that night. The flight was smooth but his mind was going through a fair bit of turbulence. The air traffic congestion at Mumbai added to the chaos. The flight took over three hours to land in Mumbai . . . something which should have taken him less than two hours. ‘Flights are meant to catch up on sleep,’ he would normally say. Not today. He was wide awake. He ignored repeated offers from the crew for dinner and kept staring at the back of the seat in front of him. He was not getting a good feeling about it. A voice at the back of his mind kept telling him, ‘Something is going to blow up somewhere, watch out’. If only he knew when and where . . .

  Chanda was awake when he walked in. The tense look was not lost on her. She still cared for him. Initially when she heard about his role in collections, she had been worried. So were both their parents. But once he had made that decision under Aditya’s influence, she had supported him wholeheartedly.

  Amit tossed and turned in bed almost the whole night. She had never seen him restless like this before. In the middle of the night, she woke him up. Actually she didn’t need to as he was wide awake. She sat up with him and humoured him for over an hour. They spoke about his career, his college days, his bank, their parents, etc. What a conversation to have in the middle of the night! Amit had put on some weight off late and Chanda was worried about his cholesterol level. When Amit kept tossing in bed, Chanda’s mind started working overtime, making her feel that these could be sure-shot signs of an emerging cardiac problem. Just to ensure that it was not so, she decided to stay awake with him for some time. It was a long never-ending night for both of them.

  The Next Day

  20 December 2007

  Rakesh Srivastav arrived the next morning. When he showed Amit the non-bailable arrest warrant, it had shocked Amit. Why him? What had he done? Why should he be arrested for something which he couldn’t be held guilty for? These questions had no answers. He was taken to the Bandra police station, where after a prolonged discussion between the Bandra police and Rakesh Srivastava, he was lodged in prison.

  Rohan Naik had promised to do something for him. The bank has clout he had said. ‘We will pull you out. Do not worry.’

  He was hoping that those words didn’t remain mere words when the knock on his prison cell woke him up. He had shut his eyes and was trying to get away from the world of pain. Tulsiram would have felt the same. Helpless. The thought of Tulsiram, his family, his pain and the utter poverty which would possibly have driven him to commit suicide crossed his mind. The big clock in the hall started ringing its hourly note. He counted the number of hits of the dong, and that told him that it was only ten at night and he had a long night ahead.

  ‘You have visitors,’ a constable with a handle-bar moustache said in a voice that was softer than the other voices he had heard there. Amit looked up with eager and hopeful eyes.

  Behind the head constable’s desk, sitting on the same bench where he was sitting in the morning, he could see Chanda. Along with her was the other gentleman who was solely responsible for getting him into all this. Actually why should he be blamed? Amit had the option of not taking up this assignment. No one forced him. Hadn’t he taken it up on his own free will? The constable opened the cell door and disappeared. The cell he was lodged in was not a prison meant for normal prisoners. It was just an overnight lodgement area found in most prisons for convicts to be put up before they moved to formal prisons and long-term cells. He walked out into the main hall of the police station. Chanda ran up to him and hugged him. She had tears in her eyes.

  ‘Ma called,’ said Chanda amidst short sniffs.

  ‘Don’t tell her about this.’

  ‘No I won’t.’

  ‘Don’t worry Amit.’ It was Aditya. ‘I will personally take care of this and ensure you come out with your reputation intact.’

  ‘I hope so too Aditya. I don’t even know how they could arrest me on abetment to suicide.’

  ‘We will have to wait and see the charges that they have filed against you.’

  ‘We are moving a stay petition tomorrow morning in the High Court. My
first priority is to get you out of here. How to handle the Tulsiram issue is something we will think about later.’

  ‘Who is working on this?’ Amit asked.

  Aditya reassuringly replied, ‘We have got Subramanian & Co. to work on this. Ravi Subramanian is looking at this case himself. I have personally spoken to him. Naik is currently at his office drafting the petition to be placed in front of the magistrate tomorrow morning. You do not need to worry. I am on top of this now.’

  ‘Chanda, it will be fine. It’s going to be OKAY,’ said Amit while holding her hand as a gesture to reassure and comfort her. Chanda looked distraught and ready to break down any time.

  ‘Amit, tell me, do you think we were at fault in Hyderabad?’ Aditya interrupted their romantic embrace.

  ‘No Aditya. Tulsiram is not even a delinquent customer with us. The suicide note says that the recovery agent asked for three EMIs from the customer. There is not a single payment overdue from the customer at this point in time. How could we have gone and demanded three instalments? Obviously a recovery agent from some other financier has gone to the customer and he is confusing him with ours. He has multiple loans and is defaulting on most of them. It could be possible that he mixed it all up, given the confused and depressed state that he was in at that point of time.’

  ‘How confident are you that our agent was not involved?’

  ‘Quite confident, Aditya. Why do you ask? Is there any other twist to the tale?’

  ‘Jaldi, jaldi . . . khatam karo . . . finish, finish . . .’ a constable started heckling them before Aditya could answer Amit’s question. Aditya looked at the inspector sitting in a corner and waved at him.

  ‘Ae pandu, let them be. Wo hamare aadmi hain. They are our people.’

  The police in Bandra were quite helpful. The NYB security team had managed to influence them through the seniors at the IG’s office. Unfortunately, the arrest warrant for Amit was issued in Hyderabad and hence unless it was quashed, the Mumbai police could do nothing about it. At best they could extend basic courtesies to Amit.

 

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