Ravi Subramanian
BANKERUPT
Desire. Greed. Murder.
Contents
About the Author
By the Same Author
Dedication
1. 21st April 1999
2. 5th June 2008, 9.25 a.m.
3. Early March 2008
4. Summer of 2000
5. June 2004
6. November 2004
7. February 2005
8. February 2005
9. May 2005
10. End-May 2005
11. May 2005
12. May 2005
13. July 2005
14. July 2005
15. August 2005
16. October 2005
17. March 2006
18. April 2006
19. Mid-2006
20. Mid-2006
21. January 2007
22. April–June 2007
23. May–June 2007
24. July–September 2007
25. Early October 2007
26. 3rd October 2007
27. Mid-October 2007
28. Mid-October 2007
29. November 2007
30. December 2007
31. End-February 2008
32. March 2008
33. March–April 2008
34. April 2008
35. First quarter of 2008
36. April 2008
37. April 2008
38. March–May 2008
39. May 2008
40. May 2008
41. 26th May 2008
42. 26th May 2008
43. 27th May 2008, morning
44. 27th May, night
45. 28th May 2008
46. 29th May
47. 30th May
48. 31st May 2008
49. 2nd June 2008
50. 3rd June 2008, morning
51. 3rd June 2008, evening
52. 3rd June 2008, night
53. 4th June 2008
54. 4th June 2008
55. 5th June 2008, 10.45 a.m.
56. 7th June 2008, morning
57. 7th June 2008, evening
58. 8th June 2008
59. 9th June 2008
60. 9th June 2008
61. 9th June 2008
62. 10th June 2008
63. 11th June 2008
64. 11th June 2008
65. 11th June 2008
66. 11th June 2008
67. 11th June 2008
68. 11th June 2008, night
69. 12th June 2008
70. 12th June 2008
71. 12th June 2008
72. 12th June 2008
73. 12th June 2008, same time
74. 12th June 2008
75. 12th June 2008
76. 12th June 2008, evening
77. The next few years
Follow Penguin
Copyright Page
PENGUIN BOOKS
BANKERUPT
Ravi Subramanian, an alumnus of IIM Bangalore, has spent two decades working his way up the ladder of power in the amazingly exciting and adrenaline-pumping world of global banks in India. It is but natural that his stories are set against the backdrop of the financial services industry. He lives in Mumbai with his wife, Dharini, and daughter, Anusha. In 2008, his debut novel, If God Was a Banker, won the Golden Quill Readers’ Choice Award. The Incredible Banker won him the Economist Crossword Book Award in 2012.
To know more about Ravi visit www.ravisubramanian.in or email him at [email protected]. To connect with him, log on to Facebook at www.facebook.com/authorravisubramanian or tweet to @subramanianravi.
Also by Ravi Subramanian
FICTION
If God Was a Banker
Devil in Pinstripes
The Incredible Banker
The Bankster
NON-FICTION
I Bought the Monk’s Ferrari
To
Anusha, Meghna and Manya
1
21st April 1999
Washington
Bill Clinton, President of the United States of America, walked into the Central Rotunda, the large-domed circular room on the second floor of the Capitol Building in Washington. An impressive ninety-six feet in diameter and roughly double that in height, the Central Rotunda was the most imposing part of the seat of the US Congress.
The events of the previous day were playing on Clinton’s mind. In a fatal attack on Columbine High School, Colorado, two high-school-going teenagers armed with assault guns walked the corridors firing indiscriminately at everything in sight. The result was mind-numbing: twelve students and one teacher dead, over twenty-five injured and hundreds scarred for life. That Tuesday, the ugly side of guns had reared its head once again.
Walking quietly around the room, a preoccupied Clinton revisited the Democratic Party’s desperate attempt to curtail gun abuse in the USA. In 1992, when initially elected President, Clinton had become the first presidential candidate in over eight decades to have run his campaign on promises of stricter laws around gun control. He signed the Brady Bill, which introduced a five-day mandatory waiting period for a gun purchase and required local police to run background checks on buyers. He was also a signatory to an Assault Weapon Ban (AWB) in 1994, which banned most semi-automatic rifles and weapons. Why then did incidents like the Columbine High School massacre take place? This was the thought running through Clinton’s mind when he stopped.
In front of him hung a 12-foot by 18-foot eighteenth-century oil on canvas painting by John Trumbull. For a long time he stood there staring at it teary-eyed. ‘You,’ he said. ‘You are the one responsible for this. Mr President. You. Thomas Jefferson. I blame you.’
The painting depicted Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of a committee of five, presenting the Declaration of Independence (DOI) to the then President John Hancock and the Second Continental Congress on the 28th of June 1776 at the Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Right next to the painting was a floor display unit, which held an image of the parchment on which the DOI was written:
We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.
Clinton was not wrong.
At the time the constitution was being debated, eleven years after the DOI, the fathers of the DOI were worried that a strong central government would trample upon the rights of the individual. A need was felt to protect the constitutional rights of the American citizen—rights that are guaranteed and are not at the whims and fancies of any government. This was seen to be in line with the DOI, which clearly said that governments must derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.
On 15th December 1791, ten amendments to the constitution were ratified. One of them was the Bill of Rights, commonly referred to as the Second Amendment:
A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
The Second Amendment conferred on the Americans the right to keep and bear firearms. This made it very easy to own assault-grade firearms in most American states. Most of the Republicans and gun rights lobbyists argued that any alteration of this fundamental right could only be brought about by modifying the Second Amendment, and that was only possible through a change in the constitution. For which one needs to go back to the people. The last line in Jefferson’s DOI came back to haunt independent America.
Clinton sighed as he walked away from the Central Rotunda. He w
as getting late for a meeting of the standing committee of the senate which had been formed to discuss changes to the Second Amendment.
A lot changed in America over the next few years. Clinton moved on in January 2001. Under George W. Bush, a Republican from Texas, gun rights took a significant step forward. Unsurprisingly, the Supreme Court struck down key parts of the Brady Bill calling them unconstitutional. Even the AWB was allowed to lapse into oblivion in 2004.
Guns were back in business.
2
5th June 2008, 9.25 a.m.
Boston Public Garden
There was a fair bit of commotion at the northern end of Boston Public Garden, right next to the weeping willows growing by the lagoons. There were quite a few people in the park, though the fifty-acre expanse made it appear sparsely populated at that hour. A few late morning joggers were hurriedly going through their routine, oblivious to the ruckus at one end of the garden.
The medic was doing his last few laps in a section of the park. Three more rounds and he would be done. He’d head home for a big breakfast, a few hours of sleep and be up and ready for the late evening shift. He was sweating through his Nike T-shirt. Cheap China-made earphones playing Metallica kept him company as he jogged. That’s when he heard a woman shriek, loud enough to drown out Metallica for an instant. Pulling out his earphones, he ran rapidly in the direction of the shriek. The wails grew louder in the direction of the weeping willows. The incessant barking of a dog added to the noise.
When he cut through the crowd of twenty-odd onlookers and made his way ahead, he figured out what the commotion was all about.
He bent down and felt for the pulse. There was none. He pulled back the eyelids and looked for the dilation of the pupils. Desperately, he tried to listen for the heartbeat. Nothing. Absolutely no sign of life. The person lying on the ground was dead. There were no physical injuries on the body to suggest murder. Probably a tired jogger who had suffered a cardiac arrest while jogging.
Someone from the crowd had already called 911. The cops arrived with the paramedics in the next seven minutes and the body was wheeled away to a nearby hospital.
3
Early March 2008
Boston
Cirisha Narayanan was alone in her cabin in the Academic Block, intently staring at the bright screen of her iMac. Petite-framed, Cirisha was an extremely attractive Tamilian, born and bred in Coimbatore. An assistant professor in Social Psychology, she had joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) a few years ago.
Her eyes were riveted on the screen in front as she ignored a steaming cup of black coffee on the table next to her. Two stories had caught her attention that day.
On the home page of International Herald Tribune was the tale of the spectacular collapse of Bear Stearns, a New York-based global investment bank and securities trading and broking firm. From the dizzying heights of a hundred and seventy-two dollars, its share price had plummeted to two dollars, which was the price at which it was picked up by J.P. Morgan Chase—a figure which was just 7 per cent of its price a few days before the collapse. It was a morbid tale of greed and lust for power which had led to the loss of livelihood and savings of hundreds of people.
‘Hope someone pays for this mayhem,’ she muttered to herself as she grudgingly moved on to the next story. Her mind stayed with Bear Stearns while her eyes moved on.
The second story was about two prominent American historians, who had had their research retracted over the past three months on account of conduct that was unbecoming of research faculty. Professor Hubert Didymus, who had won the National Book Award for his biography of Thomas Jefferson and even the Pulitzer for his book, Brothers in Barracks—the Revolutionary Generation, had been found guilty of lying about his experience in the Vietnam War and even referring to it in his books. Investigations conducted by the Boston Globe had revealed that he hadn’t even gone beyond the East Coast of the United States in his entire life. The second, professor Stephanie Walsh, author of more than thirty-five books over forty years, had plagiarized entire passages from papers of authors whose works had been mentioned in the endnotes.
While the first incident shocked her about the greed of the nation she was working in, the latter left her distressed about the state of the profession that she had chosen to be in. How could people so reputed, so trusted in their professions, compromise the faith reposed in them by millions of people? More importantly, what were they thinking when they committed these professional indiscretions? Were they hoping never to be exposed?
So lost was she in these thoughts that it took her a while to realize that the phone on her table was ringing. It was Louisa.
‘Michael wants to talk to you. Can you come to his room?’
‘I’ll be there in a minute.’ And she walked out of her cabin, turned left and walked up to Michael Cardoza’s enclosure, five rooms down the corridor.
‘Yes, Michael. You wanted to see me.’
Cardoza, her supervisor, the one who had hired her at MIT, looked up and smiled. She liked him. Fifty-seven-year-old Cardoza couldn’t stop the wrinkles from making an appearance on his face, but had maintained a physique that would put men fifteen years younger to shame. Probably a result of the discipline and training he received during his time with the US Army in the Vietnam War in the early 1970s.
He got up from his chair and walked around the table. His six-foot-two frame towered over the five-foot-two Cirisha.
‘Are you ready?’ he had a grin on his face.
‘For?’
Cardoza laughed. He turned towards his table, picked out a folder from the pile of papers and stretched out his hand towards Cirisha. ‘There you go.’
‘Oh no! I completely forgot! It is that time of the year.’ She opened the folder. It contained forty-two sheets of paper. Each of them had a photo of a student accompanied by a brief profile. ‘How much time do I have?’
‘You have time. They arrive in three weeks. The induction begins early next month.’
‘So I have to memorize these names, their profiles and mentally match it with their appearances.’
‘Yes, sweetheart. I know you don’t like this, but Cirisha, at MIT, we believe in our faculty knowing the students even before they land here. Before you enter the class, you are expected to know each student by name. Background. Profile. Even country of origin. Faculty must address students only by their first names. This goes a long way in making them feel that they belong here.’
‘When you hired me, Michael, you never told me that you would make me take an annual memory test.’ Cirisha had a grin on her face. She hated memorizing the names of students. But she had to do it, because that’s the way the institute operated.
‘Time for memory booster pills,’ said Cardoza. Cirisha smiled wider. If it had to be done, it had to be done. She took the folder from Cardoza and walked out of the room.
Back in her room she was flipping through the student profiles when her mobile phone rang. She picked it up. It was a call from India. After the initial courtesies, there was a long pause.
‘When did this happen?’
A pause.
‘And why?’
A longer pause.
‘How could you even do this?’ It was difficult to make out if she was angry or upset. ‘Weren’t you worried about the consequences? How could you?’
A pause.
‘My return flight is next Wednesday. I will bring it forward. But when I get there, you better have all the answers ready.’ And she abruptly hung up. She was extremely anguished by the call. Her entire world was beginning to crumble.
With Louisa’s help, she changed the dates of her travel back to India and brought it forward to that night.
At the Boston Logan International Airport, she walked past security check and made herself comfortable in front of the departure gate number 12 and looked at her watch. Her flight would take off in an hour. She had time to kill. She glanced up towards the television that was tuned to a news
channel. She could make out that the news anchor was discussing the collapse of Bear Stearns. Just then, a ticker at the bottom of the screen caught her eye. ‘Staring Down the Barrel in the eye of a storm. Democrat Senator Kristoveyich from Illinois casts serious doubts on its veracity.’
4
Summer of 2000
Greater Boston Global Bank, Mumbai
It was in the summer of 2000 that he had met her. Dressed in denims and a red semi-formal top, she had walked in with a team from Coimbatore.
She looked strikingly beautiful. Aditya, who was standing outside the CEO’s room with a colleague, was smitten the moment he saw her. How could someone be so pretty, yet so innocent-looking? Twenty-five years old, at best, with an intensity in her deep brown eyes that Aditya had never seen before. Hair straight and combed neatly, held by a tiny band at the nape of her neck, this dusky beauty was straight out of his fantasies. There was a certain serenity about her, a calming, yet agitating influence. She strode to the conference room and took her seat along with the rest on one side of the table. The fact that the dark man next to her was her father, Aditya would only find out later.
The moment the door to the conference room closed, Aditya jumped. He ran to the reception on the fifth floor. ‘Who are these guys? Who has brought them here? What are they here for?’
The receptionist was taken aback by this barrage of questions. Weren’t investment bankers meant to be stylish and classy? ‘I don’t know. Saif brought them here.’ After a teasing pause and a seductive look in her eyes, she added, ‘To meet your boss.’
‘My boss? Nalin?’ Aditya was surprised. ‘Really?’
‘Hmm.’ The receptionist nodded.
Aditya quickly snatched the visitors’ register from her and peered into it. They had been ushered in as ‘Saif + 4’. He frowned. ‘Why don’t you go in and ask for her name?’ The receptionist smiled mischievously.
‘Shut up.’ Aditya darted back in. This time he went straight to the cabin of Nalin Sud—the head of investment banking of GB2. Nalin was extricating his jacket from behind his chair, presumably preparing to walk up to the conference room.
Bankerupt (Ravi Subramanian) Page 1