Sad-yam. Very Sad-yam.

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. :(