Book Review: ‘End of Saamba Dance’
I read the fiction novel ‘End of Saamba Dance’ in two sittings during a busy week. Honestly, I have not read much fiction over the past 5 years. Since I became an investment banker, I have been working on opportunities that are aiding growth or funding stressed assets. I have endeavored to cover a slight long review of the book.
The Author
The author of ‘End of Saamba Dance’ is an industry veteran with experience of more than 30 years in finance, investment banking, debt restructuring and private equity.
Sridhar Ramachandran is a Chartered and Cost Accountant, and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Commerce. He has toiled his way up, supporting his family in his initial days. Few foreign stints later, he gained experience in many sorts of financial deals, corporate affairs and business situations.
He is currently the Chief Investment Officer of India Nivesh Fund, based in Mumbai, India. He lives with sons and wife in Navi Mumbai.
The experience of his life time finally boiled over into a story line. The story is a culmination of his professional experience and creativity.
Sridhar is a gregarious person, who likes to talk about his humble background and rise from the ranks. He is passionate about making a positive impact in the Indian Financial Ecosystem, and believes that the book will make an impact.
He wrote this book at the rate of one chapter a day in the summer of 2019. One of his family members taught him ‘militant discipline’, and that helped him to on the clock to finish 50 chapters in 50 days!
Some heads up — one can expect Sridhar to be on the stands with his second book based on another corporate finance saga by the end of 2020, if things go well.
Disclosure: I have current and future interests with Sridhar at a professional level.
Cover & Title
Sometimes, it is the cover that sells the book. Here is one example. The book cover is dark blending into a shade of blue-grey. It enhances the mystery of the book, which is a corporate and financial thriller.
The title font is clear in two colors — unconventional, as the normal advice is to stick to one color. The red color of the ‘Saamba Dance’ indicates the foreboding sense of down-slide and downfall of the main protagonist. I will ask Sridhar when I talk to him next.
The mask in the picture is the carnival mask worn by Samba Dancers in the Brazilian Carnival, annually held at Rio De Jeniro. The indicates the corporate veils that are worn and abandoned, during the dance of various corporate actors, both in front and behind the scenes.
The title itself accentuates this theme. ‘End of Saamba Dance’ indicates the scripted downfall of Saambasivam, a veteran businessman who has seen the heights of success. ‘Saamba’ also is one of his nicknames.
Plot Summary
I am quoting the book here, picking the words of the author himself. Here is the blurb from the Amazon website.
‘US$10 billion in revenue in 5 years, dreamt Saambasivam. A visionary leader sets off into his journey to fulfil the dreams surrounded by ‘yes men’. His ingenious way of reducing the cost of investment through Manohar attracts Rajeev and Balram to lend tonnes of money from their banks along with global banker Alister who funds the foreign money — the Saamba dance starts.
Saamba encounters the Central Minister Arunachalam who stoked his passion with clandestine deals. His son Venkat and Saamba’s daughter Rithika are in love from their Kellogg’s days — was there an agenda behind it? Saamba’s grandiose vision turns greedy with aggressive expansions and acquisitions. What goes up must come down — Saamba falters, triggering panic. South African operations collapse. Investigative journalist Sriraman dies in a mysterious accident. Did the company secretary Malathi leak confidential information to Sriraman?
Was the banking system caught napping while monies were syphoned off as exposed by the forensic audit? Can the banks recover their money through bankruptcy? Can the insolvency professional Ajit pull off deals, to save 20000 jobs? Will the law punish Saamba’s impropriety along with cohorts ending the Saamba dance?’
The plot has tried to answer various questions, which are untangled towards the end. The personality of Sambasivam is ingenious — he is flamboyant, fighter, visionary and constantly innovating a way out of a problem. We have seen such promoters in real life, mostly as headlines in newspapers. Driven by vision and passion initially, at some point, a change happens in the visionary’s mind, which dictates a course of events that results in the downfall of his business empire, his cohort and himself.
The flow of the story is to place Sambasivam on a pedestal, then the events — some of his own making, and some driven by other events, perpetrate and precipitate his downfall. What is ingenious at one point in time, is the nemesis at some other point.
Unkept promises ( the South African saga), use of working capital for building assets and infrastructure, over invoicing, tax evasion — a multitude of faults and crimes pile up as skeletons in SV’s closet as the novel progresses.
The plot travels from Coimbatore to Mumbai, to South Africa, England, Hamburg, and Indonesia. The detailing of the places brings alive the novel’s events vividly to the reader.
Corporate Karma
The concept of Karma is clearly vindicated in the book. ‘As you sow, so you reap’, and the corn would be a potion or a poison. Each character meets his or her Karma towards the end. Here are two examples.
The secondling Subbu ( being number two to his brother in age and in life) ends his life, a mix of despair and disappointment. He blossoms into his own in the South African trip, but that is a brief glimpse of the person he is, and also how SV has suppressed his second line. SV expresses regret to his widow, but somewhere it lives a residual hollow feeling with him, and the reader.
A star employee Ram Narayan, who is the CEO of the South African leg of the sprawling empire of Saamba holdings’ rise to the top, finally, falls to a bullet defending SV’s cavalier plans and promises.
These are two among the large array of characters who play their part in the rise and fall of the Saamba Empire. I will leave the reader to explore the role and play of other characters.
How corporate governance falls apart when independent directors and auditors play second fiddle, and in some case, like Nero, play the fiddle when the business house is on fire, is illustrated in depth.
The fear and eagerness, the greed and malaise, the regret and the guilt, seep through the words and deeds of each characters who seek to connive and conspire in building an empire of cards.
Media, corporate affairs, politics — the three legs of nexus with corporate make an interesting play, some acting as catalysts for growth and others as nemesis.
There are the ones who meet good ends, while some meet gruesome ends. Some are destined victims, while some fall down because of their own doing. Karma is indeed complex, if the reader has to think back on each character.
A touch of Arthur Hailey
‘End of Saamba Dance’ is rooted in the author’s deep knowledge of the financial systems and corporate laws of India. A parallel from my own library is Arthur Hailey’s novels, whose deep research beyond the characters and plot, helps the subject matter expertise shine through.
The author brings out his knowledge of debt and equity financing, corporate laws, the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code Act of 2018, apart from criminal, cyber-criminal, legal and corporate affairs. If the reader is a financial or management student, this book is an all rounded education material, apart from being an enjoyable fiction.
Style
The pantheon of characters from all walks of life, but centered around SV’s family and business, make the novel a complete saga. Through its 50 chapters, the novel pauses and accelerates when it should. The complexities of law and finance- IBC, NCLT, S4A — words that insolvency professionals will love to chomp and chew, are explained as a matter of flow in the story so that a non-finance professional too can enjoy.
The author has therefore, dealt with this pantheon of jargon and characters in a simple style. The onus however, is on the reader, to understand the subject, as it only makes the novel more enjoyable.
Aftertaste
As I put down the novel, I had this sense of unease, which I could call as an aftertaste. I realized a little later, the novel has churned my gut, only because I did not want SV to fail, even though I had this foreboding sense of unease that the fall would be inevitable.
This aftertaste is the effect of how a genius businessman overtakes himself because of greed. If that was the author’s intent, I think he got to me.
This book is a must read for all corporate, finance and legal professionals, entrepreneurs and directors, who all have a part to play in real life in avoiding such situations of greed leading to downfall.
Here is a link for the book:
https://www.amazon.in/End-Saamba-Dance-Sridhar-Ramachandran-dp-1645870928/dp/1645870928/
~Ashok Subramanian
