If God was a Banker

What will happen if a regular banker decides to write a novel?

He might call it A Banker’s Life and write about the nine to five job. It might have mind numbingly boring stuff like tallying accounts and counting notes. And probably the joys of happy and secure family.

And what if a storyteller who has to work in a bank for a living comes up with a novel? Then he would call it ‘If God Was A Banker.’ Ravi Subramanian has tried hard to break the myth of the ‘regular banker’ and given us a juicy read.

The plot of this novel is inspired by the tale of the hare and tortoise. Swami is the poor little good guy, and since he fails into a stereotype, he is left alone in most of the pages. Sundeep, the villain of the story gets the major footage as his career rockets up in spite of, or because of his unethical and unconventional modus operandi.

Swami and Sundeep, both management graduates join New York International Bank at the same time. Sundeep’s classmate, Kalpana, is impressed with Swami’s honesty and marries him, leaving Sundeep heartbroken. Sundeep marries Natasha on the rebound, but harbors revenge towards Swami. As they swiftly climb the corporate ladder, Sundeep keeps trying to pull Swami down. On his way, Sundeep meets ‘bad company’ and gets sucked into murky waters, where ethics come last, and women are nothing more than sex objects.

Swami’s perseverance gets tested many a times, but something keeps him loyal to Sundeep. Sundeep, on the other hand, is blinded by his success into arrogance and selfishness.

This book offers some inside looks at MNC’s culture, or the lack of it. Page by page, it demystifies the stereotype of banking.

If you have a lot of money in a bank, you can treat this book as an entertaining guide on ‘all that can go wrong with your savings’.

What I disliked about the book:

The language is at times unnecessarily repetitive and simplistic. The characters lack depth. The good guy is saccharin sweet and the bad guy is black as coal.

The only grey is the marriage that survives in spite of the wayward husband. Natasha is the ideal doormat of a wife, she does not even tell her husband of the indecent pass made by his boss.

The plot towards the end is unconvincing. It seems that the author realized that he better be politically correct and so he takes a moral stand on his naughty protagonist.

What I liked about the book:

The narrative has a smooth flow and reads easily.

Like Alfred Hitchcock, Ravi Subramanian does a guest appearance as one of the key characters in the book. Yes, he has used his own name, probably to buy belief into the make believe world he created. Somehow, it works.

The book devotes an entire chapter that questions the way women are treated in the corporate culture.

If God was a Banker throws up some deep questions at the corporate way of functioning. How do we rate our performance? What yardstick do we use? Is success so one-dimensional that it can be counted on our fingers? Why have we become so superficial? Let us step out of the ra(bbi)t race, let us join the tortoise.