Financial Tsunami changing landscape

So much has been written about the current financial climate and its impact that you might think what new am I going to blog about.
But there is something that intrigues me these days. Almost every day I read some retail chain, some bank, some online store closing down and filing for bankruptcy.
It reminds me of environmental disasters like floods, tsunamis, forest fires which changes the entire landscape. Old things disappear and new areas evolve. The current Financial Tsunami (as some media agencies term it) is something similar.

No longer will we see the household brand Woolworth in our local High Street where you could get a kid’s toy to an old man’s duvet. Every year we see MFI ads flooding the TV with its Christmas 50% offers on its furniture sets. No more from next Christams. No longer will we purchase music from the online discount chain Zavvi. No longer will the elite society purchase Teas and Coffees from Wittard of Chelsea. No longer the best mortgage deals will be available from Northern Rock. No longer will the highest savings rate will come from a bank in a tiny country of Iceland. The TVs will be spared from some of the worst ads where a spectacled guy dances and screams about HBOS interest and lending rates. No longer will the unique twin giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac be the trusted names in secondary mortgage market. Back home, some of the most anticipated and sought after institutions on IIM campus like Lehman, Bear Sterns and many other I-Banks will now be absent. In fact there are so many more names that will suddenly disappear like LandAmerica, Circuit City, Linens N Things, Wellman, Flying J, Palms of Treasure Island, and many many more. I am even sure by the time you forget about having read this blog, there might have been many more names and I might have to do a sequel to this. Some statistics state that US bankruptcy proceedings have surged 30% in the last 12 months. In a tiny country like Serbia, experts say as much as 40,000 companies would face bankruptcy (Mind it they are talking of companies and not individuals).

This Financial Tsunami has engulfed some of the oldest and biggest brand names.
In fact had the governments not intervened on time, there could have been many more like Goldman Sachs, AIG, Citi, Bank Am, GM, Fortis, Chrysler, Ford, and the list is endless.

Slowly people will forget that such names existed and the brands will die as people’s memory is short-lived. Well as they say Change is the only constant thing in the world and today’s landscape is fast changing.

Shantaram - Not a Review

I just finished reading Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts and couldnt resist writing about it. Please note this is not a review of the book.
All those who would have read this book would agree that this is not just a novel. To start with, I would say its like a saga, a biography, or may be a long TV Series something which I had experienced earlier with Jeffrey Archer’s Kane and Abel or with Eric Seagal’s Doctors or even his other famous one ‘Prizes’.
While Kane & Abel, Doctors or Prizes moves fast and has a single direction in terms of its story, Shantaram moves in multiple angles, it deviates extensively from its theme. The story sometimes involves you and engrosses you totally, at other instances, it drags you quite a lot.
It’s a like a flashback story where the anchor keeps recollecting multiple things and cant contain himself of penning them down simultaneously. Its obvious that the author has so much to write that he sometimes mixes them. I feel Gregory wanted to vent out his feelings and never imagined this will turn out to be one of the international best sellers. It was supposed to be an outlet for his emotions built through his innumerable experiences and sometimes adventures.
It’s also to be kept in context that he was writing this book in jail and his first two copies were trashed by the prison authorities.
Many times during the story, you also wonder whether all that Gregory has written is truth or is some sort of his fantasy. The accounts of Afghanistan, Prabhaker’s village and Arthur Road Jail fall into this category. The moments with Karla will also fold under the same fantasy.
In fact his accounts with Karla and Khader (the two central characters of this epic drama apart from the author himself) gets frustrating to me at times. Can anyone continue to have the same emotions with these two characters inspite of all that he receives from them?

This reminds me of a Hindi movie Dil Se. (I know I am deviating but please hear me out). In the movie, Manisha’s character continuously betrays Shahrukh’s character but he continues to blindly believe in her, trust her and love her limitlessly to the extent that in the end he dies with her.
Coming back to Shantaram, I felt a similar emotional frustration for Lin’s story with Karla and Khader. I also read somewhere that Gregory once admitted Karla and Prabhaker to be fictional characters (borne out of his imagination). That can be considered true because the way author describes Karla’s subtle beauty and pearls of wisdom, you crave for a real-life meeting with her. In fact, those Karla and Khader’s thoughts and proverbs are so superb and worth collecting that they can form a separate compilation in itself.
You also wonder with the end if there is going to be a sequel to Shantaram. So many questions are left unanswered and make you curious and craving for more. What happens to the Sri Lanka journey? What happens to Khaled? Why does he end up in jail for 6 years? When does he get caught? What happens to the mafia and gang wars post Sanjay and Chuha? Imagine this appetite to read more in the book is still alive after you have just finished almost 1000 pages of his book. Now that’s some journey and reading experience. Daily mail has aptly summed it as ‘a gigantic, jaw-dropping, grittily authentic saga’.
In the end, if the story is all true, it also surprises me of Mumbai’s (that time Bombay) criminal history. Its so easy for foreigners to overstay here, work as a professional in Bollywood (like Lisa) without any work permit credentials, get involved in serious crime without getting noticed by police department or may be they continue to ignore the fact that there are illegal immigrants from countries around the globe including Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Nigeria and others. While the author takes this as an open spirit of Mumbai. In today’s context after the 26/11 blasts, it scares me totally…