Panchtantra Story : The Weaver, the Princess and Goldman Sachs
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Biharilal Deora CFA
Jun 17, 2010, 1:23:16 AM6/17/10
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The Weaver, the Princess and Goldman Sachs
Everyone knows that we Indians invented the zero. Without zero and the
decimal number system, writing and calculating really large numbers would be
very difficult.
This would be awful for people in the financial industry, whose work depends
on having really big salaries. Fortunately Brahmagupta came to their rescue.
Another thing which is crucial to the financial services industry is the
concept of being too big to fail, which has been put to good use by
Citigroup, Bear Stearns, and Goldman Sachs over the past few years in
sucking money from American taxpayers. This beautiful concept was also
invented by an Indian - Vishnu Sharma, the author of the Panchatantra, in
the story of the Weaver and the Chariot Maker.
The story of the weaver and chariot maker is one of the Panchatantra stories
that usually doesn't make it to primary school textbooks or Amar Chitra
Katha, mostly because it's full of sex, war, and moral hazard. Since you
probably haven't read it, here's a quick summary.
A weaver sees a princess during a festival and falls in love with her. As a
weaver, he has no chance of marrying her, so he sinks into depression. His
friend, a chariot maker decides to help him out. He designs a flying chariot
in the shape of Garuda, dresses the weaver up as Vishnu, and tells him to
fly the chariot into the princess's room, tell her that he is Vishnu and
wants to marry her Gandharva style. That is, the wedding is kept a secret
from everyone except the princess and the faux-Vishnu. The princess agrees,
and the weaver comes back every night to consummate the marriage.
Eventually, the maids notice that the princess is spending her days in total
bliss, suspect that she's in love, and tell the King. The King asks her
what's going on, and she tells him that she's married to Vishnu himself. The
King is absolutely delighted, and decides that there's no point in paying
tribute to the Chakravarti now that Vishnu himself is on the kingdom's side.
The next night, he catches the weaver as he enters the princess's room and
asks him to fight the Chakravarti's army.
The weaver is horrified. Pretending to be Vishnu was fine when it allowed
him to make sweet, sweet love to the princess, but taking on the role of
Vishnu to face an imperial army single-handed is another thing altogether.
On the other hand, if he confesses to the King that he is not actually
Vishnu and has been boinking the princess under false pretences for the past
month, he will have his head chopped off. So he decides to get on to the
battlefield and do the best job he can, while the King is whipping up
enthusiasm in the population by telling them that Vishnu himself is going to
do all the fighting.
By this time, Garuda (the real one, not the mechanical one) has tipped off
Vishnu about what's going on, and warned him that if the fake Vishnu doesn't
win the battle, the people of the kingdom will lose all faith in him. Vishnu
doesn't want to see this happen, so on the battlefield he enters the
weaver's body and annihilates the Chakravarti's army. The entire army. Every
single soldier. After this, the weaver marries the princess, everyone goes
on worshipping Vishnu, and the king becomes the new Chakravarti.
The moral is that you should conduct your affairs in such a way that if you
fail, it will lead to someone or something even bigger or more powerful
failing too. This lets you get away with anything. The weaver got away with
having sex with the princess on false pretences (this is rape under Section
375 of the Indian Penal Code), pretending to be a god (awesomely enough,
this too is a criminal offence under Section 508), and annihilating an
entire army that was fighting a just war - after all, it was the king who
broke the treaty (you could make a case for this being genocide under
Article 2 of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime
of Genocide).
American banks and financial institutions were very good at absorbing this
lesson, and leveraged themselves up to such an extent that if they failed
they would take the global economy down with them. And just as the weaver
lived happily ever after with the princess, banks have lived happily ever
after with taxpayer-funded bailouts.
But no matter how hard American investment banks try, Indians still remain
the masters of this art.
If the whole truth surrounding Lalit Modi is revealed, big politicians might
be trapped. Modi is, thus, likely to get away lightly -- as is A Raja, who
might have given away spectrum at bargain basement rates, but whose sacking
would lead to the government collapsing. All this goes to show that no
matter what the anguished elderly gentlemen who write letters to the editor
feel, Indians are still in touch with our ancient and glorious culture.
--
Regards
Biharilal Deora, CFA, ACA
Cell: +91-99308 37335
Email: biharil...@gmail.com
Gtalk/Yahoo id: deoralalbihari, Skype: bdeora
www.linkedin.com/in/deora
Blog: http://spectruminvestors.wordpress.com/
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The Weaver, the Princess and Goldman Sachs
Everyone knows that we Indians invented the zero. Without zero and the
decimal number system, writing and calculating really large numbers would be
very difficult.
This would be awful for people in the financial industry, whose work depends
on having really big salaries. Fortunately Brahmagupta came to their rescue.
Another thing which is crucial to the financial services industry is the
concept of being too big to fail, which has been put to good use by
Citigroup, Bear Stearns, and Goldman Sachs over the past few years in
sucking money from American taxpayers. This beautiful concept was also
invented by an Indian - Vishnu Sharma, the author of the Panchatantra, in
the story of the Weaver and the Chariot Maker.
The story of the weaver and chariot maker is one of the Panchatantra stories
that usually doesn't make it to primary school textbooks or Amar Chitra
Katha, mostly because it's full of sex, war, and moral hazard. Since you
probably haven't read it, here's a quick summary.
A weaver sees a princess during a festival and falls in love with her. As a
weaver, he has no chance of marrying her, so he sinks into depression. His
friend, a chariot maker decides to help him out. He designs a flying chariot
in the shape of Garuda, dresses the weaver up as Vishnu, and tells him to
fly the chariot into the princess's room, tell her that he is Vishnu and
wants to marry her Gandharva style. That is, the wedding is kept a secret
from everyone except the princess and the faux-Vishnu. The princess agrees,
and the weaver comes back every night to consummate the marriage.
Eventually, the maids notice that the princess is spending her days in total
bliss, suspect that she's in love, and tell the King. The King asks her
what's going on, and she tells him that she's married to Vishnu himself. The
King is absolutely delighted, and decides that there's no point in paying
tribute to the Chakravarti now that Vishnu himself is on the kingdom's side.
The next night, he catches the weaver as he enters the princess's room and
asks him to fight the Chakravarti's army.
The weaver is horrified. Pretending to be Vishnu was fine when it allowed
him to make sweet, sweet love to the princess, but taking on the role of
Vishnu to face an imperial army single-handed is another thing altogether.
On the other hand, if he confesses to the King that he is not actually
Vishnu and has been boinking the princess under false pretences for the past
month, he will have his head chopped off. So he decides to get on to the
battlefield and do the best job he can, while the King is whipping up
enthusiasm in the population by telling them that Vishnu himself is going to
do all the fighting.
By this time, Garuda (the real one, not the mechanical one) has tipped off
Vishnu about what's going on, and warned him that if the fake Vishnu doesn't
win the battle, the people of the kingdom will lose all faith in him. Vishnu
doesn't want to see this happen, so on the battlefield he enters the
weaver's body and annihilates the Chakravarti's army. The entire army. Every
single soldier. After this, the weaver marries the princess, everyone goes
on worshipping Vishnu, and the king becomes the new Chakravarti.
The moral is that you should conduct your affairs in such a way that if you
fail, it will lead to someone or something even bigger or more powerful
failing too. This lets you get away with anything. The weaver got away with
having sex with the princess on false pretences (this is rape under Section
375 of the Indian Penal Code), pretending to be a god (awesomely enough,
this too is a criminal offence under Section 508), and annihilating an
entire army that was fighting a just war - after all, it was the king who
broke the treaty (you could make a case for this being genocide under
Article 2 of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime
of Genocide).
American banks and financial institutions were very good at absorbing this
lesson, and leveraged themselves up to such an extent that if they failed
they would take the global economy down with them. And just as the weaver
lived happily ever after with the princess, banks have lived happily ever
after with taxpayer-funded bailouts.
But no matter how hard American investment banks try, Indians still remain
the masters of this art.
If the whole truth surrounding Lalit Modi is revealed, big politicians might
be trapped. Modi is, thus, likely to get away lightly -- as is A Raja, who
might have given away spectrum at bargain basement rates, but whose sacking
would lead to the government collapsing. All this goes to show that no
matter what the anguished elderly gentlemen who write letters to the editor
feel, Indians are still in touch with our ancient and glorious culture.
Regards
Biharilal Deora, CFA, ACA
Cell: +91-99308 37335
Email: biharil...@gmail.com
Gtalk/Yahoo id: deoralalbihari, Skype: bdeora
www.linkedin.com/in/deora
Blog: http://spectruminvestors.wordpress.com/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THIS EMAIL & ANY ATTACHED FILES ARE PRIVATE & CONFIDENTIAL
If you are not the addressee, any disclosure, reproduction, copying, distribution, or any other dissemination or use of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this transmission in error please notify the sender immediately and then delete this email. Email transmission cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error free as information could be intercepted, corrupted, lost, destroyed, arrive late or incomplete, or contain viruses. The sender therefore does not accept liability for any errors or omissions in the contents of this message which arise as a result of email transmission. If verification is required please request a hard copy version.
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