The Devil n the Sea

Lehman Bros collapsed. The entire market did not exactly crash after that, but in a life and time marked by general socio-economic ill health of our world, it served an important reference point – a milestone. Petroleum prices playing hide and seek with the hapless politicians; Middle East sitting on a ticking time bomb; terrorists across the world riddling democracy with suicide attacks; Barack Obama’s controversial middle name; the only Anglo-Saxon Christian presidential solace for the most powerful country in the world a reflection of typical Yankee ignorance notwithstanding; India had little or no reasons to worry. Or so we were told. We even had a feeling of insulation, though lukewarm. But blame Lehman Brothers.

Nearly all from investment crashed - the bankers with their banks. I heard some added a variant, the thought of jumping out of their high rise windows; don’t know if they managed that. Jokes apart, in discussion now are apparently the best brains of our world – the whiz-kids of Harvard, Wharton, MIT and the IIMs. Whisked off their campus with the promise of a life not envied only probably by the Sultan of Brunei, these people are supposed to be the beacons of mother earth. IQ above 160, they are the walking talking encyclopedias of economics, commerce, business, IT, and all of the rest. Equipped with their knowledge they are generally expected to propel humanity to unprecedented heights of planetary achievement. They are the smartest things among living beings and…

Look what they have done to the market.

Back home, Dalal Street and her run to 21000 points seems like India winning Prudential Cup sometimes long ago. Post Lehman milestone, suddenly the ghosts in the closet have got out. The industries are buckling, and pink slips are flying all around. The smart talking Relationship Managers of the Banks and Asset Management Companies are considering it unfashionable nowadays to open their mouth. The silence is so impatient that the uneducated politicians bickering about coming elections are sounding rather intelligent; and the morale is so low that minds are under the threat of getting blown away by a weak whiff of air. Pundits on TV, who make a living out of post-mortem, have found out a new name – Global Financial Tsunami.

Yesterday North East Bangla, a local TV channel came to interview me. Of all industries, they chose Aviation. I had a huge flex board somewhere in our office that read about unparalleled opportunities coming up for the industry by 2010; facts endorsed by Ministry of Civil Aviation and a few others. There were lot of statistics about the phenomenal growth in terms of employers, employees, aircrafts and blah blah blah… all in hundreds and thousands, and some even in lakhs – sadly I do not remember the statistics now because some smart Alec had the board removed when petroleum crisis hit the news channels. Though I tried to answer the interviewer to the best of my abilities, the red board haunted me. The stale news of Jet, Kingfisher and Indian Airlines stepped down as a new worm hatched inside my head.


Eighty years ago (history says that), bad times had fallen upon the planet. It is called the Great Depression. A lot of us were not born then. But lot of those who were there, must have observed the phenomena have passed the knowledge on to the right places. There are lots of case studies I am sure. During the first few days of witnessing the second depression (if I may name it so) through TV or newspapers, I had wondered what exactly did the business management guys learn from such earlier cases. Aren’t they supposed to learn from the past? I mean they teach you this moral at home, you don’t need to visit even the main gates of any IIM for this.

Life was usual for my middle class being. But as the days passed by, I kept noticing a slight change in the market temperature. The business house representatives and the opinion builders, with political backup, were earnest to their desperate best to placate the nervousness of the mass. Many of them were even traveling to the extent of dubbing the bad news as ‘base-less rumors’ etc. as I kept wondering why would someone lie so blatantly even when nations were at stake. One doesn’t quell fear factor by wiping the whole truth off the table.

It was then I realized that these guys know the basics. They are intelligent to the level of geniuses. And such a primary moral of ‘learn from your past’ is no rocket science either. Basics are amply clear where they should be; and it is not they who don’t know facts - it is we who don’t understand the veracity. The reality is that, the effects of assimilation of any moral lies in application, and the business think tanks of modern day apply lessons learnt to enhance the profit factor of organizations.

Where intelligentsia is supposed to shoulder the onus of steering the rest of us to a palpable direction of prosperity, they get remarkably ravenous in the course of walking-talking-looking-living important, of flaunting lifestyle and wealth. Perception management and lies, both covert and overt step in. Cover stories cook up. Dialogues flow and opinion gets created. That is where the huge red boards get set up in offices, across magazines, everywhere outdoors, and inside the common man’s mind. We are optimistic. We buy such pictures for the hope of a better future, place our lives in their hands and trust them with that. And we expect them to place theirs in our hands and trust us. We thus invest – money, time, honor, resource, life and even off-springs.

The brand ambassadors however don’t subscribe to such sentiments. Their focus remains on earning profit to ensure their convertibles and condos; the upkeep of the private yachts and islands of their lords and masters, at the cost of the rest of our planet. A common man seldom realizes his sheer bad luck. That within feasible limits, he and his types are the only ones available to them. The tragedy that there are no outer planets that houses creatures interested to do business with these opportunists.

From space and sentiments, if we come back to earth and decide to get real, then let us try these few questions. “Trade Secret” is an old term. But look here. Whose trade? Who all are involved? Whose money is contributing to the profit mechanics? What is the secret after all? And why is it a secret in the first place when nearly the entire world is involved in investments? The jargons that fly all over the TV screen tells us that this is not some petty story of an obsolete craftsman, that he’d have his skill secret from the village folks.

So. Is it a secret managed especially for voyeuristic reasons? The fact that the economy owners love to watch us ‘perform’ our senseless antics as they climax with the thought of how evolved they are. While we squirrel away small amounts from one to the other corner and wonder what next, they sit high and mighty and take pride in acting gods. Reminds me of the dialogue of Deewar – ‘Mere paas Maa hai!’ In effect, I have my little secret which you don’t have, and bro let this thought haunt you for the rest of your life, when you sit and ponder how deprived you are. At least Vijay was not a voyeur.

And now? Market down, money gone. I am sure that the gods of modern day business realize that they maybe voyeurs, but they are not very intelligent. Where greed dominates the mind, there is little to learn and little to feel proud of. And even though there is plenty to hide, depressions like these dig out lot of dirt. Nice and dark humor.

Coming back to us – the junta is always stranded for the want of a better future. We have two sides accompanying our being. At one side we have an evangelist, a certain Mr. Feel-Good, as per modern day terminology. At the other, we have a deep blue sea that doesn’t look like Park Hotel swimming pool on a lazy Sunday morning. Issue is the evangelist doesn’t let us look that side. They drown us with stocks and bonds and economics talk. They knock us out with retail and IT and telecom revolution. They overwhelm us with greed, that green shade in our eyes as we rally to pick up the latest gadget or swipe our cards for the biggest diamond. It is contagious.

If the lifestyle angels around our first shoulder are distractive, then the view over the other is menacing. The sea is deep, it is bad and, unlike the smart looking brand ambassadors, it looks bad too. If one cares to concentrate that is. It is called the Real World. There is a transition that Liberal Democracy is going through. Terrorism is getting legitimized. At places in the world, they are running governments and nations. We live with the fact that tomorrow we might have neighbors with terrorist governments. Religions in conflict, land in conflict, and politics in conflict – the mix is more potent than a lot of mixtures that you have known so far. There are full scale wars around almost all continents even at 2008 – as you and I boast of the elevated human intelligence behind the latest gaming series or the pen, which also doubles up as a virtual computer.

At home, we are witnessing bomb threats every week. The politicians’ psyche haven’t shifted an iota from where it was sixty years ago. They too are ruled by high greed and low competency. State governments and oppositions are at loggerheads over power-play. The basic canon of a government of/for/by the people is passé. It is more a Middle East style state of Monarchial affair where the people are of/for/by the government. Religious tolerance is at an all time low. Appreciation of language and culture is like a zombie from the past that no one notices. Environmentally, the fossil fuel, which arrived to its current productive state post a million year metamorphosis, has been near finished by us in a little over hundred years. Global warming is the order of the day. Rain forests are nearly out. Glaciers are following behind. Whatever resources we have at our disposal, have all been dug up from underneath. This is the only earth we have, and we have raped her quite religiously. But the businessmen of today, with their industrial and techno-delights have so strong a presence in our mind that at best, we don’t know that such a forcible violation has happened; at worst, we don’t care about any rape or its victim.

Knowledge is relatively simple. One opens oneself and knowledge pours in. But how simple it is to develop the right outlook? All the years that we have enjoyed our stay at mother earth, what has been our center of attention? Environmental Awareness? No. it has been wealth accumulation at any cost. We laugh or we cry when we get rich or poor. Like we all are crying now, for the money that we lost. Tomorrow we will laugh again, because some smart talking devil will resurrect the giant wealth spinning machine and our ‘world’ will be nice and shiny again.

Before long, it’ll be too late in the day - time is running out. Would you want to focus on some cause that’s far away from the latest LCD TV or the next stock market Bull Run? Would you want to turn the next page of this planet on a cooler, better note? Or would you rather leave no page worth turning?

For once, would you focus less on the devil and acknowledge the deep blue sea?