Roller Coaster: An Affair with Banking

Do you know what it meant when bankers said “Chinese cuisine”, “Punjabi food”, or “Gujarati thali”?

An RBI governor let down his hair at his
farewell dinner to swing to “Lungi Dance” from the Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Chennai Express.

The chairman of a financial institution relied on “signals” from the idol of a goddess kept in his cabin for clearing loan proposals.

A public sector bank chairman liked to munch hot chilies with his lunch. A kitchen help was deputed to mop up the sweat from his bald head!

Roller Coaster is a string of such stories and revelations from the country’s foremost banking journalist’s affair with the industry—even though banks were not ideal partners for such liaisons. He has seen the industry and dramatis personae grow over two and a half decades, first as a rookie reporter, then as an editor and a columnist, and, finally, as an author.

The book brings to light the lives of India’s commercial and central bankers. But it does not discuss their successes, failures, or the ever-evolving dynamics of monetary and fiscal policies. It’s about their persona, warts and all—how they are as leaders, how they evolved, and how they changed the culture and ethos of the Indian banking sector.

Dive in for inside information about some of the biggest names associated with Indian banking—Uday Kotak, Sandeep Bakhshi, Amitabh Chaudhry, V. Vaidyanathan, as well as C. Rangarajan, Bimal Jalan, Y. V. Reddy, D. Subbarao, Raghuram Rajan, Urjit Patel, Shaktikanta Das, and many more.