Bankerupt (Ravi Subramanian)

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

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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.