The Incredible Banker Read online

  'But you should know how important he is for me.'

  'But why? If he is moving, why do you look worried?'

  'Babes, I moved in here because Sanjit wanted me to. When he asked me to take up this role last year, he had committed to me that he will move me out of it in twelve months. I have spent a better part of the last ten months trying to put systems and processes in place and ensure all the audit comments are rectified. This is a critical time for me. If he moves now, I will be in deep trouble. No one else knows that he had agreed to move me in twelve months and not eighteen as documented.'

  'You are doing exceedingly well here. So what's the worry? Even if you are here, you will do well na?' Savitha didn't see much point in Deepak's fretting.

  'No, dumbo! I don't see a career for myself in credit. I am a sales guy. I am a business guy! I need to move back to business. And that's why I am a bit worried with Sanjit moving out. I have no clue what will happen to me now.'

  'Try talking to him. I am sure he will work something out. He is not leaving tomorrow morning. He is here at least for some time,' Savitha tried to assure him.

  'Yes, I am sure he will do something before he goes.' There was a moments silence before he spoke again. 'But I worry that he may not have enough clout to do anything now that he is moving out.'

  'Yes. That's a worry. Why don't you call him now? Let's see what he says.'

  'Yes, yes, come...sit. Let me call him now.' Savitha sat down and Deepak dialled Sanjit's line.

  'Sanjit Banerjee's office, how may I help you?'

  'Hi Sherlyn, how are you? Deepak this side.'

  'Hey Deepak! How are you? You want to speak with Sanjit?'

  'Yes, Sherlyn...if possible. "

  'Wait, let me check,' and she put him on hold. She came back within ten seconds and said, 'Hold on...connecting you.'

  For a couple of seconds, Deepak could hear music play on the intercom as Sherlyn was connecting him to Sanjit.

  'Hey, young man! How are you?' Sanjit said as the line connected.

  'I am fine, Sanjit. You are leaving the bank? I was shocked when I saw the mail.'

  'Haha...young man. Yes, I am leaving the bank. You saw Girija's message, I guess?'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'At times in life, Deepak, you have to make a choice,' Sanjit said rather philosophically. 'And these choices are not easy. After having spent so many years in GB2, deciding to move out is like moving out of your parents' house and stepping out into the big bad world. I am at that stage in my career where if I don't venture out now, I will never be able to do so. So, even though it was not easy, I took the plunge.'

  'Yes, Sanjit. We all look up to you for support and guidance. And all of a sudden you will not be there any longer in the organisation.'

  'I will be there for you, young man. I am not moving out of Mumbai.'

  'Sanjit, I called to ask something,' Deepak finally decided to pop the question.

  'Tell me.'

  'When I moved into the audit role at your insistence, you had promised that you will move me out in twelve months. That period will get over in some time now. So I wanted to check with you if it will be possible to move me out of audit before you go. Otherwise I will get stuck here.'

  'But why do you want to move? There are issues, but you are doing a reasonably good job.'

  'I don't see myself building a career in credit and risk, Sanjit,' said Deepak, at the same time wondering what were the issues he was talking about. 'I am managing right now but the organisation will never see me as the top man for the risk management job.'

  'Why do you say that?' Sanjit asked.

  'There will be seasoned risk professionals ready to take on Bhisham's role. I will be nowhere in the consideration subset even if I carry on for a few years in this role. I will always be seen as a business guy in a credit role. Always under the microscope,' Deepak explained his apprehensions.

  'Hmm...that may not be the right way to look at things but that's the way the world works. Yes, you may have a point there. Ok, let me see what I can do.'

  'Thanks, Sanjit. Do keep me on your radar. Please don't forget about me. I am depending on you for this.' Deepak was beginning to realise that he had ruffled quite a few feathers by firing from Sanjit's shoulders. Now without Sanjit, he would himself come into the firing line.

  'Yes, Deepak. I am aware. Will surely try and fix up something.'

  'Thanks. If I may, I had one last question.'

  'Shoot.'

  'You just said that despite some issues, I have done reasonably well. What were those issues, Sanjit?'

  'Nothing that cannot be fixed, my friend.'

  'I would then like to fix it, Sanjit. If you could let me know, I will work on them.'

  'Look, Deepak. If you had not asked, I would have called and told you myself but probably at a later date. Now that you ask, I will tell you. See, I have been picking up a lot of noises around you.'

  'As in?'

  'Deepak, I never spoke to you about this because you were doing a good job. But many people have come and spoken to me... at times bordering on even complaints that you have misused your proximity to me and often played dirty with people. I have also heard that in the team, no one likes you. In fact I did speak to the retail banking head a few weeks back to consider you for a role. He was very hesitant and the only reason he gave me was that it would vitiate the atmosphere in his team. Now that is not a good reputation to have, my friend.'

  'But I haven't done anything wrong, Sanjit. I just did my job.'

  'Look, Deepak, there is a way one goes about doing one's job. You have done a good job, no doubt, but as you move up in life, managing stakeholders with conflicting objectives becomes extremely critical. You need to know how to get things done without ruffling too many feathers. Our organisation lays a lot of stress on collaboration. People working together. Let me give you an example. When you did the mortgage process audit, it was clear to everyone that you were out on a witch-hunt. You did not even give poor Karan a chance to explain his position before you released the report. Is that the protocol? No. The poor guy was condemned even before he could explain. I just bumped into him at a supermarket the other day and he told me the real reason for his quitting. I am surprised why Rajneesh never took it up. Probably with all the issues that we have had in audits, he was too worried to take up anything with the credit folks.'

  'But, Sanjit...,' Deepak began to say something but he was cut short by Sanjit.

  'Look, my friend, I will be out of this place. You have to survive here. You can either try and rationalise your behaviour or take this as a learning and move on. If I was you, I would introspect on what went wrong and then make efforts to build bridges which I have burnt. I need to go now. Have a conference call with Singapore. Sherlyn has been standing on my head for a while now. You take care. Will talk in some time...and by the way, please congratulate Sherlyn. She is moving as the CEO's secretary after I leave,' and he hung up, leaving a fuming Deepak holding the phone at the other end.

  'Bastard!' muttered Deepak as he kept the phone down.

  'What happened?' Savitha could only hear one side of the conversation.

  'What did he say?' she asked Deepak.

  'Nothing, babes.' He sounded very agitated.

  'Come on, tell me. What did he say?' She was persistent.

  'He says that I am a political, manipulative asshole...damn!'

  'But you are not.'

  'I know I am not. But he is saying that the way I handled the mortgage audit, is being held against me. That bastard Karan has squealed to him. Even Rajneesh and Ramneek seem to have said something hostile. He even says that I am a name-dropper and that I flaunt my closeness to him. Though he did not say it clearly, he was implying that he will not be able to do anything for me.'

  'Shit! And you were relying on him to take you back into a business role.'

  'Yes. So it means that I am seriously screwed. Why did I even believe him and come here?'

 
'It's ok. Don't worry. Everything will be fine.' She patted his shoulder. That's the best she could do because Deepak's room was in full public view.

  Deepak knew that it was not going to be all right. At least for the time being. He knew he was stuck in audit for long.

  February 2008

  Somewhere in Western Mumbai

  IT was a small clingy room, at best 6 ft x 6 ft, dark and damp, with not enough ventilation. In that room was a young lad, who would not have been more than twenty-four years of age. In front of him, on the table, were two computers. One was an old antiquated desktop computer. The wires from it had been unplugged and plugged into a slick laptop, kept close by. The table was small and hence everything on it looked cramped. The graphics on the screen made one infer it was a state-of-the-art and heavily configured system.

  Lying on the small table in an agonisingly confusing and cluttered manner were hordes of communication equipment with a mind-numbing number of cables connecting the equipment to a junction box outside the room.

  The place resembled a sleazy rundown version of an internet cafe. The person sitting in the enclosure, which could classify to be called an apology of a room, had been there the entire day and had not come out even for a minute. A bottle of Gatorade and one of water were the only things he had consumed. Even the internet cafe owner had been given instructions not to allow anyone to come inside.'There is a little bit of whore in all of us...what's your price? Kerry Packer had once said. The whoring price of the Internet café owner was too low and he had happily obliged by keeping the café vacant.

  The screen of the laptop was a mish-mash of websites. A crazy number of sites were open, or so it seemed. A few screen shots even showed some source codes, weird combinations of zero and one moving weirdly across the screen. To the layman, this would have looked extremely mind-numbing. But not to the person working in the room. He was at ease with what was transpiring.

  After thirty minutes of constant peering into the screen, he took his eyes off. All this while he had been trying not to blink, lest he missed something important. He stretched a bit, slid back in his seat, rested his head against the seat top and then extended his arms to stretch. He was nearly there. The agenda for which he had spent twelve hours on a trot was nearly achieved. Nobody could stop him now.

  He picked up a mobile phone lying on the table. Next to it was a voice scrambler, which when attached to any phone converted the sound emanating from the speaker into a string of data which could then be heard by the person at the other end, only if he had an unscrambler. A technique quite common if one wished to escape interception of sensitive conversations.

  'I am nearly done. Another fifteen minutes and we will be in,' he said.

  'That's great news, comrade. Charu will be happy,' the person on the other end replied

  'Yes, the programme is running into its final leg. Once it's done, it will take us straight into the source data of the Indian government's passport office website. I expect this to be completed very soon.'

  'Great going, comrade. Which means we will have all the data that we need by tomorrow morning?'

  'Yes. I have managed to get into the website. Now I am one firewall away from their data. Before they realise what we have done, we would have gone away with all their important data.'

  And then both of them broke into a roguish laughter.

  And the government will be too ashamed to acknowledge this, and will never make this public,' the guy at the internet cafe bragged further.

  'I know...I know. That's how it always works in our country.'

  The person in the room then kept the phone down. After carefully disconnecting the scrambler, he packed it up and kept it in a specially designed space in his bag.

  As time went by, the grin on his face grew wider. And finally when the words -

  Begin download

  Press 'Yes' to continue

  appeared on his screen, he just clapped his hands in glee. It was a defining moment. What a momentum this would give to their ability to raise funds for their movement!

  He pressed 'Yes' and the download began. He opened the bottle of Gatorade and took a couple of swigs.

  At that very instant the owner of the cafe rushed in.

  'What the hell? I have categorically told you not to come in!' screamed the guy on the computer.

  'Cops!' the owner said pointing towards the door. He was panting. "They want me to shut the shop. It's too late.'

  'Tell them to wait for another half an hour. I am nearly done,' came the nonchalant response.

  'I have tried. I have even offered them money. But they are not going away.'

  'How much did you offer them?'

  'Five hundred bucks each. There are two of them. Infact they had come some time back. I managed to send them away. Now they have come again.'

  'Come on, man. Don't be so greedy. Share what you are making with them too. Give them five thousand each. They will surely go away. It's more than their monthly salary. I will pay you that money. I can't afford to stop now.'

  'Ok, let me try. But how long will you take?' The owner didn't seem too convinced.

  'Another thirty minutes maximum, after which I will be gone from here.'

  'Ok. Let me see if they scoot.' And the owner scurried out to speak to the beat constables.

  He could hear muffled noises. The owner was trying to speak to the constables to give them thirty more minutes. The constables were adamant. The voices grew louder. The discussion was escalating into a conflict. 'Damn! What timing!'

  'Downloading file. 14 minutes to go' the computer screen showed. If only the cops had come in after fifteen minutes! Even now, with god on his side, he could accomplish what he had set out to achieve.

  '13 minutes to go.' He read aloud out the message on the screen.

  By now the discussion had grown into a full-blown battle. He could hear some more voices. The battle had spilled on to the street and more had joined in. The shouts were clearly audible. The owner was screaming at the constables, asking them to mind their own business and leave.

  '12 minutes to go!

  The guy in the room folded his hands and closed his eyes. His lips started moving as if in a prayer. So close to achieving his goal, yet so far. The street fight was still on. He wanted to get up but couldn't. He didn't want to expose himself to the crowd, especially to the cops.

  '11 minutes to go.'He. didn't see this milestone being crossed as his eyes were closed and he was deep into his prayers. The closed eyes gave him a feeling of darkness all around him. Meditation had taught him how to concentrate on his job.

  '10 minutes to go.'

  '...Beep.'

  A beep broke his concentration and he opened his eyes. The darkness persisted. He rubbed his eyes in disbelief and opened them again. The darkness stoically refused to dislodge itself. The only light in the room came from the screen of the laptop, which displayed two words in a box in the centre of the screen.

  'Connection failed..'

  The lights were off. He bent down in desperation and looked at the communication equipment – the equipment he had used to dial into the passport office website failed to respond. The amber light on the face of the equipment was not coming on. There was an eerie silence all around. The noises that had tormented him earlier, had suddenly fallen quiet.

  'What the hell?' he screamed. His scream pierced the silence all around, before it fell hauntingly silent once again. He could now clearly hear the conversation outside. Slowly he realized what had happened.

  After the conflict had escalated, one of the constables had walked into the cafe and pulled out the fuse. He was using a laptop and hence even though the power failed, the laptop was functional. The communication equipment that he was using didn't have a battery back up. It was plugged to the power socket. When the constable pulled out the fuse, it disconnected the power to the communications equipment which crashed, in the process disconnecting itself from the laptop, thus thwarting all the efforts of
the person in the room.

  There was no point fighting with the constables or the cafe owner, as there was nothing they could now do. The damage had already been done. He quietly packed up all the stuff in the room, disconnected all the communication lines, picked up his bag and left the room through the rear door.

  A few minutes after he left, a muted and controlled blast was heard from the room where he was working. The cafe owner rushed inside only to find that the table and all the equipment on it had been reduced to ashes in the blast, destroying any trace left behind by the person working in that room.

  What was his agenda? Why was he working there ? No one knew. Everything of relevance in the room was destroyed.

  A few miles away a knock on the door woke up the occupant of the house.

  'What are you doing here?' the lady asked as she opened the door. 'Is the job done?' she was eager to know.

  'No. There was a problem. A power failure disrupted all our plans when we were so close. I was just minutes away from completing the download when a power failure crashed my communication equipment. Anyway, that was not to be. I need to stay here for the night. There might be people on the streets looking out for me.'

  'You can't stay here for long. You need to leave before anyone gets up in the morning. No one should see you here.'

  "The train to Midnapore leaves from Mumbai Central at 7.30 a.m. I will leave at six. Will that be all right?' asked Kishore.

  'Yes, that should be fine. Come in quietly,' she said. She glanced out of the door briefly. Not a soul could be seen on the road at that hour. 'Good,' she said to herself as she banged the door shut.

  "The last room on the right. You can rest there. And leave in the morning before anyone else wakes up. And please do not leave anything behind. I don't want any trace of you having stayed here, else I will be in trouble.' she said.

  He walked to the last room and kept his bag on the table next to the bed. It was a functional room he and his comrades used when they had work in this part of the country, or when they wanted to hide from the police. He quietly sat down, reflecting on what went wrong. Not connecting the communications equipment to the battery backup was a big, big mistake. They were so close to hacking the passport office website. So close. They desperately needed the passport details so that they could gather the data which would be very useful in fudging identities of individuals. This raw data would have gone a long way in creating forged documents and identities for their comrades and also helped them in raising money for their cause.