‘Remember me as the Grisham of banking’

When he’s not cutting a presence between investments and other financial dealings, you’ll find Ravi Subramanian doing what he loves most — writing. For the retail banker has already penned three books (the next one’s on the anvil too), with the first book If God Was a Banker having won the Golden Quill Award a few years ago.

Like the previous book, the new book — Devil in Pinstripes, is set in the New York International Bank, but this one is in the backdrop of the deteriorating credit environment. “In this one I’ve explored the life of a young couple — Amit and Chanda, who by a quirk of fate see their relationship metamorph from being man and wife to professional colleagues. They are thrown into the same organisation and become subjects of intense political manipulation. The story is built around these relationships,” he says, adding, “inside the pinstriped suit we wear, there lives a devil. In some he is dormant and pronounced in some. My book brings to life this devil.”

And while it is largely fictional, real life has crept into the pages too. “There are segments which have been inspired by incidents of political manipulations, frauds, superficial relationships etc that I have seen around me in the 17 years that I have been in the corporate world,” he adds. The fourth novel, The Imperfect God, is about the personal life of a foreign banker. “It’s a story of three generations of people in this one large south Indian family. This is the first time I am experimenting with a story which is not completely set in a corporate world and has external linkages. I am also experimenting with a fifth one — which is a book of short stories…can banking be far behind?” he laughs.

There are two authors who inspire him as he waves his page-turners. “John Grisham and Jeffery Archer, but more of the former,” he decides with an afterthought. 10 years down the line after a few more successful books, I will be satisfied if people remember me as the Grisham of banking.”