Where Angels Prey

Renuka surreptitiously looks out of the window in an attempt to distract herself from the unintelligible drone of the rather distinguished looking speaker at the head of the room. Her English vocabulary is rather basic, a grand total of four words that include
bank
,
loan
,
meeting
and
thanks
. A fact that the speaker is either unaware of or is possibly indifferent to. The sights on the road below seem more interesting if only in their contrast to the rarefied atmosphere of the room. Here she is, seated on the fourteenth floor of the gleaming skyscraper that houses the Bombay Stock Exchange, looking down at the shiny tin roofs of the slum tenements below, the dirt and grime a sharp contrast to the affluence on display around her. Pavement dwellers conduct their morning ablutions right on the street and blank-eyed children try to make a quick rupee cleaning the windows of the fancy cars that crawl by, as the owners wave them away like they were pesky flies.

All this seems such a far cry from the little village Renuka comes from and where her family have lived for generations. She now longs to be back there, enveloped by the open spaces and the sounds of her village. The early morning crowing of the roosters seems so far removed from the honking and bustle of this big city. She looks wearily at her companions and wonders if they feel as disoriented and lost as she does. She huddles closer to them, desperate to draw some courage from their proximity. She can almost sense the collective thought, uppermost in all their minds.

“How did I get here?”

All the women wear saris in the traditional way with the
pallu
hooked over their left shoulders and covering their heads. Their gaudily coloured clothes and betel juice-stained teeth stand out in comparison to the sober shades that the gentry around them are attired in. It is evident to all that they do not belong here. Even when dressed in their Sunday best! There aren’t too many other women in the room apart from the few female reporters, who look so sophisticated in their pant-suits and make-up that she feels even more intimidated by them than by the men.

Renuka herself has had no formal education, nor has her husband. The family owns half an acre of barren land with no irrigation facilities. As a result, the couple hire themselves out as agricultural labour. The supplementary income that accrues from selling the milk from her cows has helped to ensure that her three girls go to a private school where they are taught to speak English. Renuka can’t help but wistfully hope that their daughters grow up to be like these other women, educated and with well-paying jobs, rather than suffer their mother’s lot in life.

Renuka tries to discreetly nudge Gangamma.

“How much longer?”

“How would I know?” Gangamma whispers back.

Renuka tries hard not to squirm. The air-conditioning is not helping.

“It’s cold…I need to go!”

Bommakka glares at them both. She is a little bit older and has always been the leader among them. She has studied up to Class 10, which makes her highly educated as compared to the rest of them. She was married off at the age of 16 and had borne four children by the time she was 20. Tired and exhausted, she finally took herself to a free clinic and underwent a tubectomy to prevent further pregnancies. After regaining her strength, she took over the family finances and rallied the women around her to take control of their lives as well. She had a positive spirit which helped her make things happen for herself and for others around her too, so much so that even people older than her tended to look to her for guidance. It was she who had convinced the men-folk to allow their wives to board a plane, saying that it was good for their community and their village. She came from a long line of storytellers who passed down legends through the ages, which helped her find the words to state her case eloquently.

Despite all that, Bommakka had been as taken aback the first time they saw a plane at close quarters. As for Renuka, whenever she spotted a plane that appeared like a speck in the distant skies, she would wonder how normal-sized
people actually fit into them! Did they feed people some magic potion to shrink them enough to fit into those tiny planes?

Ramulamma, the hundred-year-old hunchback of Madiseri village, had warned her so. Renuka promised her that she would refuse all the food and drink offered to her on the way. Thankfully, the plane was not as small as she had thought. It could accommodate not just her but also her nine other friends, Bommakka, Sir Garu, Nagalakshmi madam, and a couple of hundred other people.

A round of polite applause interrupts her thoughts.

She is relieved to see Annayya Garu stand up. This means that the meeting is over.

“Renuka, take this!”

Renuka looks curiously at the object that he holds out to her. It is a fat wooden stick. What does she have to do now? Nagalakshmi Madam smiles encouragingly at her.

“Hit it!”

Renuka looks in the direction that she is pointing towards. It is a large, round iron plate.

“Announce to the world the beginning of a new era!”

Renuka hits the gong with all her might. She does not know that she is ringing the opening bell for trading at the Bombay Stock Exchange. She is just a little pawn in a much larger game which she is yet to grasp.

The sound reverberates across the room. The stock of SAMMAAN Microfinance is now officially listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange. A company providing financial services to the poor is now rubbing shoulders with the rich and mighty of corporate India!

“It is Destination NYSE next! Westward Ho!” Annayya Garu exclaims with great cheer.

Renuka has no clue what he is talking about and wonders if her cow back home in the village has delivered its calf already.

I ran for President because for much of the last decade,
a very specific governing philosophy had reigned about
ho
w America should work: Cut taxes, especially for
m
i
l
l
ion
a
i
r
e
s and billionaires. Cut regulations for special
i
nter
e
s
t
s
. Cut trade deals even if they didn’t benefit our
workers. Cut back on investments in our people and in our future—in education and clean energy, in research and technology. The idea was that if we just had blind faith in the market, if we let corporations play by their own rules, if we left everyone else to fend for themselves, that America would grow and America would prosper.

And for a time this idea gave us the illusion of prosperity.
W
e saw financial firms and CEOs take in record profits
a
nd record bonuses. We saw a housing boom that led to new home owners and new jobs in construction. Consumers bought more condos and bigger cars and better TVs.

B
ut while all this was happening, the broader economy
was becoming weaker. Nobody understands that more than
the people of Ohio. Job growth between 2000 and 2008 was
s
lower than it had been in any economic expansion since World War II—slower than it’s been over the last year. The
wages and incomes of middle-class families kept falling while
the cost of everything from tuition to health care kept on
going up. Folks were forced to put more debt on their credit cards and borrow against homes that many couldn’t afford
to buy in the first place. And meanwhile, a failure to pay
for two wars and two tax cuts for the wealthy helped turn a
record surplus into a record deficit.
By now, Bob is finding it a challenge to keep his eyes open. Blame it on the lunch of roast beef and potatoes, flavoured with
garam masala
to give it an Indian twist. The drone of the TV only adds to the drowsiness. Bob gently rubs his hand over his over-stuffed stomach, wondering if he has time for a quick nap. A senior economics correspondent with
The New York
Post
, Robert Bradlee’s high pressure job and erratic schedule have turned sleep into a luxury to be grabbed whenever the opportunity presents itself. There is also the pressure of an evolving personal relationship that he is determined to give his best to. His mouth curves into a smile at the thought of Priya, his girlfriend of over a year. A Fulbright scholar from Hyderabad in India, she is doing her postdoctoral research in development economics at Columbia University. They had met at the opening of a highly recommended play that Bob’s friend had dragged him to. After dating for over six months, they had decided to take their relationship to the next level and Priya moved in with him. Even while taking the plunge, both had their reservations over the advisedness of the move. Priya had a bad marriage in her past, while Bob had always thought of himself as commitment-phobic. Surprisingly for both of them, the arrangement worked out pretty smoothly and their time together had been both harmonious and happy.
Priya’s voice cuts through his pleasant reverie; she asks if he would like ice-cream for dessert. He wonders how his beautiful Indian friend could be so perky after that massive meal. She loves feeding people. It’s as if she still lives amidst her large joint family back in India.

Bob forces his droopy eyelids open.

“I am as stuffed as a Christmas turkey.”

Priya grins at him.

“Ice-cream won’t take up space. It will melt into your insides!”

Bob snorts.

“And add inches to my already expanding middle!”

Priya laughs before she shoots back.

“And that’s my cue to tell you how fit you are, Mr Bradlee!”

She places the tray on the coffee table before dropping down on the couch next to him.

Bob grimaces.

“The weighing scale is unfortunately not as kind as you, milady.”

Priya gives him a friendly poke.

“Enough already!”

Bob eyes the bowl of ice-cream balefully. She had to get his favourite flavour too! He finally gives up and digs in with relish.

The Presidential address draws to a close. Priya picks up the remote and starts surfing channels. Bob catches a glimpse of a familiar face on the screen.

“Hey, wait a minute. I want to see that!”

It is an interview with Prasad Kamineni, the brain behind one of India’s leading banks for the poor.

“This was the guy featured in
Newsline
, right?”

Priya’s gaze is stuck to the TV as she nods.

Prasad’s company, SAMMAAN Microfinance, lends to the poor without any collaterals. A concept that has increasingly caught the eye of the western world, it appears a dignified way of lifting people out of poverty since it offers financial support even to those people who would otherwise be deemed not creditworthy because of their lack of assets.

The company had gone public with a huge and incredibly successful stock market launch. Bob recalls the
Newsline
article carrying an image of the man, flanked by a few of his poor female clients, celebrating their listing at the Indian stock exchange.

The anchor asks Prasad how the idea for a stock issue came about. After all,SAMMAAN is part of the microfinance sector that focuses on the financial empowerment of the poor rather than on hefty profit margins and dizzying dividends, a staple of the commercial markets.

“East African Microfinance Bank, a Kenyan microfinance firm, had already demonstrated that microfinance is both a viable as also a profitable investment option. In fact, in 2007 their IPO was 16 times oversubscribed!”

The anchor is suitably impressed.

“That is a formidable record indeed…so have you broken it?”

“We were 25 times oversubscribed, actually!” Prasad Kamineni responds with an almost embarrassed smile.

Bob glances at Priya just in time to catch the obvious pride on her face.

“He is
manavalu
…right?”

Priya turns to him in surprise.

“What did you just say?”

Bob is confused now.

“
Manavalu
…did I get it wrong? Doesn’t it mean…our people…I mean your people? Isn’t the guy from Andhra Pradesh, too, a Telugu just like you?”

“I’m impressed! Where did you pick that up from?” Bob grins at her.

“That’s not relevant. So did I get it right?”

“
Sautakka
!”

“What?”
“Cent percent!”

“That’s Telugu too?”

“Hindi.”

Bob tries hard to suppress a groan. Priya, like many Indians, is fluent in at least three languages—her mother tongue, Telugu, the national language, Hindi, and English, which has been her medium of instruction.

Priya is amused by his expression. Her attention reverts to the TV screen.

“This guy, Kamineni, he hails from a very rich and politically influential family...big shots….
peddavalu
as we call them…and he’s been a Wall Street raider besides.

“And he chucked it all for a career in poverty relief!”

“Not like he couldn’t afford to!”

Bob chuckles.

“He still didn’t have to, Priya. Come on, cut the guy some slack!”

Priya shrugs her shoulders. Bob knows she is deeply prejudiced, thanks to her ancestry. Priya’s family comes from the landed class and she nurses a deep guilt for their often inhuman and oppressive ways. Priya has memories of her grandfather doling out punishments as the head of the village
panchayat
(council) by tying transgressors to trees and whipping them. She still shivers when she recalls the cruelty of it. Bob is convinced that it is this guilt that has shaped her convictions and her commitment to grassroots work.

“You have to give it to the man—his company’s achievement is remarkable, particularly at a time when the global economy is still in the dumps. And with the market being as volatile as it is!”

Priya’s expression turns sober.

“That is so true. I mean millionaires are turning paupers overnight. Remember the instanceofRajaram, the millionaire NRI from LA, who gunned down his entire family before killing himself, after losing all his investments overnight?”

“That was a real tragedy. But the idea of killing yourself over money or the lack of it still kind of rankles!”

Priya gives him a wry look.

“You and I can’t even begin to imagine what it is like to have nothing, to be in debt right up to the ears and to have your back against the wall!”

Bob holds up his hands.

“I was just saying that suicide is no solution!”

“I know it is not, but sometimes people know no other solution!”

Bob gets off the couch and stretches.

“What say we take a walk? Let’s try and burn at least a fraction of those zillion calories!”