The man who stirred the hornet’s nest is one of our own. Barely a month ago, he was one of the stalwarts who had earned a place with the stars among the stellar entrepreneurs who transformed the IT industry.
Byyraju Ramalinga Raju now is associated with ‘Bhayyam’ (the vernacular word for fear in the Telugu language). The gults (as Telugu people were referred to at our famous alma mater) are an extremely proud lot. Now that pride is dented by the hammered force of the greed of the son of the soil.
Well, he is on the boil now… with the world calling him the greatest ever fraudster from India. We are all wondering about the sheer callousness and irresponsibility with which he staked the lives and careers of people who were sworn in to be his loyal comrades at Satyam. He is probably being called ‘Deyyam’ (meaning ghost in Telugu) whom everyone wants exorcised.
Maybe this was the reason why there are two ‘y’s in his name. He became the satan that he didn’t intend to become. On the contrary, having names that means God in some way, couldn’t dissuade the Raju brothers from being erroneously human.
But hey, let’s not get myopic with the ‘blame it on, Andhra’ rhetoric. There are overtly greedy, charlatans of goodwill and trust in every corner of the world. The latest (as and when it happens) is always the biggest and the most disturbing. And this day’s latest is the Satyam fiasco. I can’t say there won’t be another new swindler on the podium tomorrow but I definitely can hope that there won’t be.
As the elder Raju admitted, they probably thought that the tiger they were riding on was worth the risk as long as the juggernaut continued. Unfortunately for them, they didn’t realize that greed ends at infinity. And the tiger lost steam along the way.
[In his most innocuous way, Aravind Adiga might be sniggering at Raju for his reference to the Tiger. And I am not even hinting that Adiga might have got himself a few more readers for his book thanks to this ongoing saga.] (Bad joke, I know. I am yet to get over the White Tiger. Read my other recent post)
‘Plain Woeful Crooks’ should be what PwC should rechristen itself as. They still seem to be hanging on to the ‘disclaimer’ note claiming they didn’t do anything. But the whip is about to slam into them any one of these days (or so we think)!
Raju, in all his goodness, attempted to hoodwink the world by stating that he was the sole master chef that cooked the books with no fringe players to support him. A scam of this magnitude definitely needed a lot more c(r)ooks to stir the stew.
From ‘Brothers in Arms’ to ‘Brothers in Alms’. My heart bleeds as an Indian and as a gult. Let the truth prevail.
Sad-yam. Very Sad-yam. :(
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Friday, January 9, 2009
A Roar or a Whimper?
Ah… the White Tiger!
Well, the book promised a lot more from the outset – the Booker win, the unassuming South Indian who stirred the literary world with the roar of the Tiger, the media buzz around it, etc – than what it finally delivered. It was a good read and I am not complaining. The story is a mug shot from life around us. It could have been a short story within my own ‘Survival Ecosystems’ piece on this blog. It is subtly comical at certain places. It is satirical in most. It was irreverent, amoral, self-deprecating, repulsive, stirring and quite obviously boring as well.
Maybe Aravind could have held on to the drama/ suspense till the end even though I did not expect a very shifty plot. The enigma of unraveling to myself what maketh a Booker winner pretty much goaded me to finish the book even though I lost interest midway through it. I had my wife asking me if the story was so riveting that I refused to let go of the book even when my glass needed a refill. I replied, “I just want to finish it.” I finished it over two 4 hour sittings which were continually disrupted by the din of the television (that my wife was watching), our kid’s nursery rhyme rehearsals (playschool hangover at home) which had me participate and the attention that my mobile phone demanded when it buzzed. Not that I am slow reader. I just wanted to read each and every word of the novel unlike the more accomplished speed readers who do a 400 page novel in 2 hours. And I didn’t want to do the ‘do’!
I wanted to get under the skin of the protagonist of the plot. I wanted to be ‘a diggah’ (a digger, not Adiga)! A diggah of the subterfuge that Adiga pulled off so well. I kind of liked the imaginary conversation with the Chinese Premier but it was a real drag after a while. The Chinese connect is difficult to justify despite certain references to the nation.
Maybe it is not so difficult to write a book after all. It just requires some serious intent and a story (any story). The catch is probably about what the reader would take away from the effort. And this book kind of confused me a bit on that front. Maybe the reader is not looking for anything. Works of fiction are not read to take home a message that one would seriously consider working on. They provide the non-rush hour rush. The White Tiger hardly roared along its journey. Even at the end, I felt the protagonist’s personification was quite misplaced. But hey, the jury lapped it up as they probably heard a roar while I heard a whimper. The world is creaming over it. And some more people are probably even more motivated to write.
The book is worth a ‘A Dig, eh’, for sure!
Well, the book promised a lot more from the outset – the Booker win, the unassuming South Indian who stirred the literary world with the roar of the Tiger, the media buzz around it, etc – than what it finally delivered. It was a good read and I am not complaining. The story is a mug shot from life around us. It could have been a short story within my own ‘Survival Ecosystems’ piece on this blog. It is subtly comical at certain places. It is satirical in most. It was irreverent, amoral, self-deprecating, repulsive, stirring and quite obviously boring as well.
Maybe Aravind could have held on to the drama/ suspense till the end even though I did not expect a very shifty plot. The enigma of unraveling to myself what maketh a Booker winner pretty much goaded me to finish the book even though I lost interest midway through it. I had my wife asking me if the story was so riveting that I refused to let go of the book even when my glass needed a refill. I replied, “I just want to finish it.” I finished it over two 4 hour sittings which were continually disrupted by the din of the television (that my wife was watching), our kid’s nursery rhyme rehearsals (playschool hangover at home) which had me participate and the attention that my mobile phone demanded when it buzzed. Not that I am slow reader. I just wanted to read each and every word of the novel unlike the more accomplished speed readers who do a 400 page novel in 2 hours. And I didn’t want to do the ‘do’!
I wanted to get under the skin of the protagonist of the plot. I wanted to be ‘a diggah’ (a digger, not Adiga)! A diggah of the subterfuge that Adiga pulled off so well. I kind of liked the imaginary conversation with the Chinese Premier but it was a real drag after a while. The Chinese connect is difficult to justify despite certain references to the nation.
Maybe it is not so difficult to write a book after all. It just requires some serious intent and a story (any story). The catch is probably about what the reader would take away from the effort. And this book kind of confused me a bit on that front. Maybe the reader is not looking for anything. Works of fiction are not read to take home a message that one would seriously consider working on. They provide the non-rush hour rush. The White Tiger hardly roared along its journey. Even at the end, I felt the protagonist’s personification was quite misplaced. But hey, the jury lapped it up as they probably heard a roar while I heard a whimper. The world is creaming over it. And some more people are probably even more motivated to write.
The book is worth a ‘A Dig, eh’, for sure!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
