Being a banker.

The word banker has quite a twang to it.

Makes one feel special like one is a doctor or a skiing proffessional or something. Something cool, something unique. Unfortunately thats not the truth. The only thing which sets bankers apart from rest of the world is that they are a ruthless but necessary evil in life. Very ruthless. Very necessary.

Nah! I guess there is more to it. Banking is a profession that brings with it great responsibility. There is so much money involved that you visibly feel the weight on your shoulders. Being in corporate banking is tougher still. The amount of money is big, the quality of work sucks.

Documentation takes on a whole new meaning. Day in and day out will be spent haggling with a puritanical and clinical operations team over things that appear logical and simple to you but do not fit in with their dashboard definitions. Logic will pretty much disappear from your life and in its stead will be an obsessive attention to detail and diligence.

Such is life.

Creativity has no space in banking. You cannot be creative when you have to disburse 20-50 cr rupees to a client. You have to be resposible. Period. But aside from the stifling of all emotions, banking is an amazing training ground because it teaches you so much and makes people like me who are flippant and casual by nature think twice about everything.

Let me give you a quarter(we think only in quarters ...q1 to q4) in the life of a corporate banker at the bottom of the foodchain.

1. Clearing exceptions...we do documentation, any documentation exercise being fully complete is impossible so we take defferals(defer the docs for later) and spend a good part of the year cleaning up our self created mess. You are a house keeper.

2. writing CAMs... CAMs are notes to analyse credit, they have to sent to a risk team which gets backs with inane queries. Most of the queries would be regarding deviations from formatting. In a bank, Format is sacroscant. Some of the queries will revolve around the core nature of the exercise - credit but mostly decisions are taken at the very top. You are a book keeper.

3. Fighting the ops... every day of your life you will pick up the phone and dial 4-5 numbers around 25 times each. Of these, about 2-3 calls will get answered on your lucky day and definitely you can rant on mails as much as you like - they will only get lost somewhere in the infinitude of mails in the average ops inbox. Yet you will write them. Somewhere your mind will rebel, your ethics dont allow you to shout at people neither say lies. But here it is a way of life, you cannot but escape them. You are a call center operator.

These will take up 95% of your time...documents, operations, exceptions, CAMS, endless phone calls, pleading with people to do their job.

And yet, horrid though it sounds it is one of the better jobs I have had in my long and rather un-illustrious career.

I have ...well, sold advertisements virtually 'door to door' or 'shop to shop' to be more precise...mostly unsucessfully but towards the end with a bit of success.

I have toured all of north india doing the rounds of plywood factories nestled in weird places with weirder people. Carried a fair amount of cash as an account settler.

I have tried my hand at guiding media relations to a finally failed amusement park

I have tried to make money out of arbitrage between stocks and their futures. Never did, though.

I have been a teacher, sort of...for Data interpretation, math and english for CAT a commonly over rated test.

I have also been an IT - sales guy ...doing some arbit work for a few months, in, undoubtedly one of the worst companies I have seen.

I have been over the last few months, a corporate banker. Sort of.

A long post to a long career at the bottom of the food chain.

I admit, though, to give credit to a job which held my interest for 8 months; that I left out the good parts of corporate banking in an effort to vent my perennial frustration.

I wonder ,as always, whether I can do something better with my life. The thought always lurks at the back of my mind...something on my own? Maybe...

The restlessness lives on...