THIS is a tale of hard work, persistence and intelligent work while rising to the top. It also tells the story of politics and chamchagiri indulged in to rise into limelight and to the top. It is also about the corporate world, corporate inhouse power struggles, the dirty world of office politics and how people do not think twice before trading something and the backstabbing that goes on to screw people.
In this story of a young IIM-B graduate, Amit Sharma, who belongs to a lower middle-class family and harbours dreams of finding a job in New York International Bank right after leaving the campus. Luckily enough for him he does get the job – a job of his dreams. What more could he have wanted when he is taken in due to a strong pitch made by Aditya Bhatnagar, the Indian CEO of the bank and a career New York banker when he is about to move to GE’s Finance and loan business. Aditya becomes Amit Sharma’s mentor and guru. Amit blindly goes by his words and even leaves his career path at Aditya’s behest.
Amit rises up in the hierarchy starting off as a relationship manager, working in the central branch at Mumbai, a coveted post. Amit is married to Chanda, a biotechnologist. They got married in 1996 at Jamshedpur from where both of them hailed. It is a traditionally arranged marriage with no romance or courtship. Amit and Chanda are complete opposites – if one is chalk, the other is cheese. Chanda, after the initial charm of the matrimony wears off, begins to get bored and feels her ambition of building a career is getting wasted. After some time, just to kill time, she manages to move into a sister company, a non-banking finance company (NFBC).
The author, Ravi Subramanian is working for a foreign bank and his wife is a biotechnologist-turned banker and the story seems to be based on their life as the author himself admitted in an interview that all “my books are inspired by what I have seen in real life.” You will need to read the book if you wish to know more about the murky world of corporate politics.
-MG
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