The Incredible Banker (17 page)

As a part of Symbiotic Technologies' green initiatives worldwide, the statements were all e-statements, that is, no physical paper would ever go to the customer. They would all be sent to the designated email ID of the individual card holder.

This was a big win for GB2 as a result of which Deepak scraped through his targets. In October he managed to issue 6,342 credit cards of which 900 were from Symbiotic. More than 10 per cent of his card acquisitions that month came from Symbiotic. None of the other regions came even close to their targets. It was a big win for Deepak and he owed it almost entirely to his friend – the referee.

Deepak won the 'Chariots of Fire' contest, and that too by a wide margin. No other region even qualified for it. In the eyes of Manish Bhalla, Deepak was a star. A rising star who held the potential to help him meet all his aspirations!

In November too, aided by a couple of similar leads from the referee, Deepak was able to meet all his targets. He was the only regional head to come out on top. Everyone else was struggling.

Deepak owed a lot to the referee for his success. Without his leads Deepak would have fallen short of his numbers. The friendship between them blossomed to the extent that they became inseparable. Savitha was the third cog in their wheel of life. Blissfully unaware of the referee or the presence of Savitha, Radhika was going about her life under the impression that Deepak, her hardworking husband, was a dutiful family man.

After the starry performance in October and sweeping the 'Chariots of Fire' contest, Deepak had manfully walked up to Bhalla and told him that instead of enjoying the prize-winning foreign trip in November he would rather do it in January, at the end of the stressful quarter. Bhalla had agreed.

In January of 2009, the 'Chariots of Fire' jamboree headed west to the pristine slopes of the Alps in Switzerland. Deepak was a part of the team as a winner. Thirty-two people from the cards team, including people from sales, credit and operations went on that trip. Deepak had cleverly manipulated it in a way that Savitha was also a part of the group. Wasn't she the one who helped him clinch Symbiotic along with a few others?

Interlaken was the chosen location for the four-day offsite, as it was the most Indian of all the Swiss sites. While the entire team returned after four days, Deepak and Savitha stayed back. They decided to head to the south of Switzerland and spend some time together before they returned to India. They had stopped bothering about what everyone else would say or think long back. They were extremely open about their relationship. For the public eye, they did not share the same room. Otherwise, they were as much together as they could be.

The referee was waiting for them at the airport when they landed back in the wee hours of a Monday morning in January. Both were surprised to see him. He did not look good. The creases on his forehead were quite a far cry for his carefree self. Deepak was quite amazed to see him like that. It looked as if he had not slept in a long while. The stubble on his face had grown long. Both of them realised that something was wrong.

'Arre, referee, what are you doing here?' Deepak asked him.

'I came to pick you guys...haven't seen you in, like, ten days-was beginning to miss you folks.'

'Shut up! Tell me what happened. You look so weird.' Deepak then added with a touch of concern, 'Is everything ok?'

'Yes...kind of. Come, let's go.' He picked up one of Savitha's bags and led them to a waiting taxi. Referee didn't own a car, so he had hired a taxi to take them back home.

They first went to drop off Savitha at her Bandra residence and then headed towards Chembur where both of them stayed. Along the way Deepak kept asking him what the problem was but he did not tell him anything. He kept deflecting the issue. Finally, they reached Deepak's apartment complex.

Deepak got down. The referee, too, got down to help him with his luggage. The building watchman came running, too. The referee helped him off-load the luggage from the boot and stood there waiting for Deepak to finish giving instructions to the watchman. 'Take it up carefully. There is lot of breakable stuff in the bags,' Deepak instructed him. Once the watchman moved out of the scene, Deepak turned towards the referee.

'So you will not tell me what happened.'

'Nothing, Deepak. It's ok. I will manage.'

'Hmm...whatever. Do tell me whenever you feel like. I hope it is not serious.' Deepak started digging into his hand bag which he had kept with himself, presumably because it had his passport, foreign currency, etc. After rummaging through it for a few seconds, he pulled out a small box. He closed the bag and gave the box to the referee.

'Referee, my friend, this is for you. A small token for all that you have done for me,' Deepak said.

'What's this?'

'Open and see. Tell me if you like it.'

Both of them moved to the building lobby even as the referee tried to carefully remove the wrapping paper.

'It's ok, you can tear it. I am not too sentimental about it like many others.'

'I was just being nice since you brought it all the way from Switzerland.' The referee tore open the wrapping paper.

'Wow!!' he screamed in delight as he saw what was inside the box. His eyes nearly popped out. 'What? Why did you buy this, Deepak? You are mad...this would be very expensive, isn't it? Idiot! You didn't have to do it,' he rattled off without waiting for Deepak to respond. Deepak just stood quietly, smiling.

'Expensive...yes but not if you go Dutch. It's a gift for you from me and Savitha.'

'But why?'

'Referee, you helped me a lot in the last three months. You have no idea what you have done for me. If I am where I am today, it's because of you. My Switzerland trip was because of you. The 'Chariots of Fire' victory was because of you. This is just a small token to tell you that we love you and value what you have done for us. Thanks, buddy. You mean a lot to us.' Deepak put his arms around the referee and hugged him. There were tears in his eyes.

Once Deepak released him from his embrace, the referee stepped back and slowly opened the box and took out the nice brand new Omega watch. 'Wonderful!' he squealed in joy like a child. He remembered the discussion with Deepak and Savitha not so long ago about the watch. He would have settled for the Titan watch, but Savitha had said, 'Why Titan? We will buy you an Omega.'

Probably because Omega was his favourite. Even in his one room tenement, he had three posters of Omega watches. Maybe that's why Deepak bought it for him. He knew his fetish for Omegas. He had never had enough money to buy an Omega. But whether he would have bought an Omega even if he had enough money, he wasn't too sure. There were other pressing needs.

'Thanks, Deepak. I will call Savitha and thank her too. This means a lot to me. My first Omega watch in my life. And I owe it to you.'

'Hmm...enough of melodrama now, my friend. Tell me what was wrong with you. Why were you looking as if your house was struck by lightning?'

'In fact it has been almost struck by lightning, Deepak. Remember I told you about my family in the tribal village a hundred miles from Midnapore? My sister, who got married last year, has come back home. Her husband's family has sent her back. They have made a demand of three lakh rupees. I don't know how I will manage that. I need to go back and settle her.'

'When did this happen?' Deepak was shocked.

'The day you left. I was in fact waiting for you guys to come back so that I could tell you and then leave.'

'You could have called us and told us. Waiting for us was not that important, idiot. We would have come back and called you.'

'Yes, but there is no mobile signal at the place where my parents stay. There are very few land lines which don't work half the time. If you think of roadside villages as rural India, you should come there to see. That's real tribal land. If one phone conks out, it does not work for months. You have to walk miles to get to another phone. No roads, no facilities. It's a chaotic life there. And no one in our government is even bothered about their welfare...about doing something to resurrect their lives, to bring up their standard of living and to give them the basic amenities.' His eyes had become red while speaking. He was very emotional about the issue.

'Well, I am not the government, dear referee. I am Deepak...a banker,' he said with a slight smile. 'Chill, buddy. Do not worry. It will be all fine. When do you plan to leave?'

'I am taking a flight to Kolkata tomorrow morning. It will take me close to two days to reach my village,' the referee replied.

'Hmm...ok. Give us a call whenever you can. We will be waiting to hear from you.'

'Sure, Deepak. You guys have been my only support in Mumbai. Can I leave this laptop with you? It is not safe at my house. I'll collect it when I come back.'

'Shut up now,' said Deepak as he extended his hand and accepted the laptop bag. '...please go home and get some sleep before the morning flight.' The two of them hugged each other and Deepak turned towards his apartment and the referee got into the waiting cab to head home. That was the last Deepak was seeing of the referee for some time.

Just as he was walking up to his house he picked up the phone and dialled Savitha. The call was on waiting. She was talking to someone else. At this hour? Who could it be? Normally she spoke to him at that time.

He stopped at the stairs. He didn't want to climb up to his second floor apartment. He would rather speak with Savitha before he went up. He waited for a minute and called again. Again the call was on waiting. Pangs of jealousy overcame him. He didn't like her talking to anyone at 3 a.m. He sat down on the stairs and waited. She would normally call the moment she finished the call. As expected, she called within three minutes.

'Hi. You had called?' she asked him.

'Yes, who were you speaking to?'

'My boyfriend.'

'What?' Deepak was irritated by her casual answer.

'Dumbo! What sort of question is this? I was talking to the referee. He had called to thank me for the watch that you gave him. He seemed to be thrilled.'

'He is facing some problems. Did he tell you about that?'

'Yes, he did.'

'Poor guy. Chal, I will call you later. I called only to tell you about the trauma he is going through but you already know. Good night now. Sleep well, baby, and miss me,' Deepak crooned into the phone.

'Of course, I will. Goodnight, baby.'

And they hung up.

R
ONALD McCain's car drove into the impressive and sturdy building of GB2. Behind his facade of strength, he was a nervous man. A man who genuinely felt that something that had happened in GB2 could have happened in any organisation. However, due to the overall outrage over the rampant growth of foreign banks and the collapse of almost all the banking majors in the developed economies, these very foreign banks had now been singled out for rough treatment by the RBI. In any economy, the regulators were protective of their home-grown institutions and India was no different.

McCain stepped out of his car. A few guys standing outside the office, smoking, suddenly dropped their cigarettes and stood erect and wished him a good day. He didn't even notice. He was lost in his thoughts. If the Ahmedabad issue, which happened before he took over the reins of GB2 in India, pushed the organisation into the watch list, this episode could signal a 'Control + Alt + Del' for the future of the organisation.

Save a solitary issue in Ahmedabad wherein the bank had got embroiled in an ugly spat with the regulators on the issue of opening and transacting on Demat accounts, GB2, thus far in India, was a clean organisation. The Ahmedabad episode was over a decade old and was more or less forgotten as a transactional and control lapse. However, this instance was about to turn their dream-run into a PR nightmare and he was right there in the centre of the tornado. He was made aware of all this and more as he walked into the room to a waiting audience of the compliance head and a few other colleagues.

He looked at Saurabh with disgust. How could he not manage relationships with the RBI effectively? At the same time his heart told him that he was not being fair. Saurabh could not have predicted this, in fact no one could have.

I
N the Dhauli forest, deep in Chhattisgarh, after the black-top tar roads broke into potholes, transformed into brown and mellowed dirt tracks and even way beyond the point where the dirt roads crumbled into winding mud paths, after the last semblance of a civilisation ended with the last of the streedights disappearing in a distance and after the last ray of sunlight was blocked by the dense jungles, a tall, red monument suddenly appeared at the edge of a clearing. Twenty-five feet in height, it was topped by a hammer and sickle and was built in the honour of a fallen warrior. White letters were scribbled across the base: 'Every drop of martyrs blood will make the new generation prosper.'

Though it looked like a memorial, it was nothing but a caution. A warning that one was entering a liberated area – a zone where Marx was revered and Mao was alive. In this region, an army of guerrillas, owing allegiance to the leftist thought process, commonly known as Naxalites, controlled and ran a shadow state. Amidst the dense jungles, isolated villages and crippling poverty, the Naxalites ruled the roost. The Indian Government was a distant, inconsequential and a hated idea.

These regions had been a mute witness to India's spectacular growth in the nineties and beyond and had been woefully left behind in terms of wealth and progress. This had helped the Maoist army to feed off the anger of the country's poor and helped them take root and grow strong in these areas.

The Naxalites consider state power as a weapon in the hands of the rich and the ruling classes which are against their movement and they hold them accountable for failing miserably in uplifting the standard of living of these tribals. So their prime target is to destroy government property and the democratically elected government representatives. They try and destroy the power of the state and act uncontrolled in their own domain. They go after the state police and paramilitary with the sole aim of paralyzing the ability of the state in containing their atrocities.

To enable and empower the tribals to fight the Naxalites and the ever increasing fear to life and property, the government started encouraging local uprisings by the tribals against the Naxalites. In a movement which saw bipartisan support from the government and the opposition in Chhattisgarh, scores of tribals were trained in the use of arms and ammunition for self defence. These tribals were given the status of SPOs (Special Police Officers) and paid a small retainership per month.

The SPOs consisted of young village men recruited, trained and armed by the state government to combat the Red army. Since they had joined the government in its battle against the Naxals, they were the most vulnerable to being targeted. Targeting the SPOs also sent a signal to people fed up of the Naxals and wanting some semblance of sanity to be restored in their lives.

On a fateful night in October 2009, a battalion of over forty SPOs and fifteen members of the CAF (Chhattisgarh Armed Forces) was resting in an ashram in Ranibodli, about 520 km south-west of the Chhattisgarh capital in Dantewada district. The ashram school had been converted into a training camp for SPOs.

Babulal, one of the SPOs, had just returned to his temporary bed, a mat, on which a blanket was hurriedly laid out, after relieving himself in the forest adjoining the ashram school. A small distance away, in a single story building, about fifty students, all in the age group of nine to thirteen, slept blissfully, unaware of the stress in the lives of Babulal and the fifty-odd remaining guys. The entire battalion was armed with assault rifles and a few AK-47s. The stock of ammunition was enough to last them for five to six hours, time enough to requisition and get back up forces in case of any emergency.

Something in the dal that was served that night in the school didn't suit Babulal's appetite. He was feeling very uneasy. He had already relieved himself thrice in an hour. He had just returned to his bed when he started feeling uneasy again. There were no toilets in the block that the security forces were occupying. The only toilet was in the children's area and access to that was shut after ten at night. It would be opened only at 5.45 the next morning. If anyone had to attend the call of nature at night, they had to trek 100 meters into the dense jungles and run the risk of getting bitten by slithering snakes or insects. Babulal didn't have a choice. He got up, walked to a hand pump in the compound, filled up a small brass lota with water and began the trek for the fourth time that night. He was feeling very weak.

After he exited the gate of the school compound, he suddenly stopped. He heard the sound of footsteps on the dry leaves amidst the dense forest. Instinctively he hid beyond a large tree which dwarfed the school gate. He couldn't see anything suspicious. A stray dog passed his way. 'False alarm,' he said to himself and went his way. Hurriedly he relieved himself and walked at a feverish pace back to the school camp. As he neared the camp, he heard some whispers. He froze. They had company. Who were they? From where he was standing, he was well hidden by the bushes. He didn't move. He tried very hard to hear the voices. Though he couldn't hear very clearly, one thing was sure. Whosoever it was, was planning an attack on the camp.

Instantly he thought about the kids in the neighbouring building. How could someone be so merciless? He inched closer to them. They were waiting in ambush. Waiting for the night to get pitch dark. Waiting for the camp to fall silent before they attacked. The Naxals had no scruples. They were happy attacking the enemy when it slept, without giving it any time to defend. His hands and feet were beginning to get cold. He could not have gone to the camp without being noticed. If they saw him, he would be dead. He decided to quietly wait and see. The dal and related problems were forgotten.

The clock ticked by. It had been an hour since he moved. If there was one of them, he could have handled it himself. But he could hear four different voices. If there were more, they didn't speak. He was outnumbered.

By around 1 a.m. a few more arrived. And then a few more. The numbers kept intensifying. They all followed the same modus operandi. Every group would come in led by a commander. He would be given a task and some ammunition and he would lead his team to a designated area surrounding the camp. By 2 a.m. there were over 250 of them. Babulal had lost their count long back. It was pitch dark. The only light in the entire area was the one glowing in the verandah of the dormitory occupied by the SPOs and CAF. A lone gunman sat there, below the light, keeping guard over fifty-odd sleeping SPOs.

Babulal could see because he had been in darkness for over two hours now. The Naxals were trained to see in the dark because they invariably operated at night. Babulal didn't know what to do. From where he was, he could see the back of the commander. The chief whom everyone referred to as 'Comrade'. He was the one giving out instructions to everyone.

And then it happened. After patiently waiting for over two hours the Naxals struck. The Comrade signalled the attack by raising two torches in the air and waving them fervently across each other. He seemed to be possessed. He was jumping up and down, waving his hands, pumping his fists and screaming. About thirty Naxalites rushed towards the camp and attacked the dorm where the SPOs had retired for the day. Mercifully they spared the children's area. As they neared the windows, they lit crude petrol bombs and threw them into the camp. The bombs landed in the midst of the sleeping paratroopers and exploded. Some of the jawans were killed instantaneously while some woke up and ran to save their lives. In the melee they opened the door and ran into the open, towards the forest. The moment they came out in the open, they were greeted by a hail of fire from the Naxals' newly acquired AK-47s. It was instant death for almost all of them. Some of the jawans caught hold of their weapons and returned the fire. It was futile. Too little to save them from the onslaught of 300 charged and possessed Naxals!

Babulal watched all this unfolding in front of his eyes and couldn't believe what he was seeing. His own men, his friends, his brethren were being killed ruthlessly.. The comrade was still jumping up and down, egging his team and screaming his guts out. Babulal was furious. In an inspired moment, when he noticed that the comrade was alone, and his back was towards Babulal, he rushed to him. The comrade didn't quite hear Babulal approaching in the melee of bombs exploding and people screaming. Babulal lunged at him from the back and pushed him down. The comrade fell. No one was around. No one could hear. Babulal kicked him incessantly. Not enough. His blood was boiling. Something had to be done. He picked up the flaming torch which had fallen from the comrades hands and went closer to the fallen comrade. He kicked him one last time in his back and dropped the torch on him. The comrade's clothes caught fire. He squealed in pain. The anguish was similar to the one felt by the scores of SPOs dying in pain. Babulal kept kicking him, screaming out obscenities. He didn't realise what he was doing but he was in pain, in grief. The comrade screamed as fire engulfed him. His clothes, his hair, his body was on fire and his followers were busy mounting the attack, unaware that the comrade was injured. Babulal, who seemed to be traumatised by this attack, didn't stop his verbal and physical volleys despite the comrade shouting in pain. And then suddenly Babulal collapsed. He fell on the ground, and his face crashed into an AK-47 which was lying on the ground, presumably of the comrade whom he had just set on fire. He clutched the back of his head and felt blood oozing out of his scalp. From the corner of his eyes he could see someone bending over and trying to shake the lifeless body of the comrade, in vain.

The death of the comrade had spoiled what was a 'near-perfect victory' for the naxals. Over fifty policemen killed, a huge haul of arms and ammunition and a big moral victory. The celebrations were cut short as 150 Naxals crowded around the burnt body of their comrade. Suddenly, they heard the rumbling of police trucks in the distance. A helicopter providing cover could also be heard. It was clear. The troops were headed their way. It would be dangerous to stay where they were. Within minutes they cleared the site. Almost everyone disappeared into the thick jungles. By the time the police party arrived, there was no one at the site. Only the dead bodies of the SPOs, Babulal, and the burnt body of the comrade could be seen amidst the heart-wrenching wails of the children locked up in the dorm next door.

The Naxals had left behind the body of their comrade. He was dead and thus useless now. Rather than waste any resources on him, they would rather focus on people who were alive and served their cause. Such was the mercenary approach of the Naxals.

The next morning the sight at the ashram school was very tragic. The bodies of all the SPOs were identified and handed over to their kin. There was only one body which was neither identified, nor had a claimant. Police were baffled. They were supposed to know every individual who stayed at the dorm. Here was one who did not appear to be a policeman but whose body was found at the place from where the Naxals attacked the dorm. Which would mean that he was a Naxal. Even if he was a Naxal, who was he?