Merchant of Venice, Modern Banking & Letter and Spirit

People who have read the “Merchant of Venice” by Shakespeare will agree with me that the story is a heady mix of banking of the times, religion and Letter and Spirit of both the contract and its interpretation. That the characters of the story and the entire plot could have undercurrents of modern banking system does not seem apparent. Allow me to elaborate....

A short summary of the story for the benefit of people who have not read the play is as follows...

We have Bassanio who wants to wed Portica. She is far away and his friend Antonio who has helped him before agrees to finance his trip. Antonio a merchant has goods at sea and hence liquidity is low. He goes for short term loan from Shylock a Jewish moneylender on the terms that it’s either repayment on due date or a pound of flesh. Well in a twist of fate news comes that Antonio’s goods are lost to sea. The due date passes by and Bassanio gets Portico who in disguise gets to preside over the case of Shylock the Jew vs Antonio the Christian. These two hate each other for religious reasons. By this time Antonio’s ships though some are lost, most return back and he becomes solvent again. He offers to pay double but Shylock refuses and insists on his pound of flesh. Portica interprets the contract in Letter and not in Spirit and says that he can have pound of flesh but no blood. In the end due to various religious and city laws Shylock is forced to convert to Christianity and forfeit the claim and also give up half of his estate to the city and the rest of it to Antonio and the merciful Antonio asks for the share of Income while giving the principle back to Shylock.

Now the Jewish religious texts say that you should not take interest from a fellow brother. The same approximate interpretation was encouraged by the church for Christians of the time. Now Christians were more than Jews in number. Now let’s see the effect on different people by these circumstances.

It’s a known fact that you need credit to run a business. Jewish interpretation of the Torah and the Talmund was that “brother” means a fellow Jew. With a majority of credit demand from Christians, Jews went into money lending to Christians and flourished while following the Letter of the Religion. Christians saw the growing financial clout of Jews and there was a general animosity between them. Shakespeare was a Christian and a bard and not a saint so we can forgive his use of a Jewish villain in the form of Shylock and his interpretation of the contract in Letter and not in Spirit. Also the portrait of evil, scheming, religiously biased reinforces the conventional view of the times. Also the subsequent events of the play have a distinct Pro Christian flavour.

Now we come to the Christian side of the affair. The Medici family is considered the first banking conglomerates. They were considered the wealthiest family in Europe and they produced 3 popes and a few rulers of France. Michelangelo and a great many renaissance painters owe their daily bread to the Medici family. So Giovanni de Medici the man who started it all and got the family the wealth is known for a few things. One thing very famous is that his bank embraced the double entry accounting system which is the foundation of all modern accounting. Another thing that is not generally known is that he may be attributed the creative accounting practice of recording interest as transaction fees. This creative step may have been the foundation of its early success as it allowed them to lend and borrow from public while following the “letter of the religion” of the time. They could penetrate the Christian market. Again the “spirit” was lost is incidental.

One of its biggest depositors and later creditor was the Catholic Church. Perhaps the three popes from the family were later kind enough to change the perception and allow interest to be charged. The Rothschild family may owe its later "bond" fortune to the developed banking system that the Medici family left behind.

So, back to Merchant of Venice and its symbolism...

Shylocks character a symbol of Jewish power of money and his intention to take his pound of flesh instead of 100% ROI another confirmation of their famed interpretation by letter and not by spirit.

Porticas interpretation can be seen as a symbolism of good over evil and using Shylock own tools to do the good.

Antonio’s magnanimous offer of 100% ROI and later when Shylock gets trapped, his offer to let Shylock keep Antonio’s half of Shylock estate in return of converting to Christianity another way for Shakespeare to show how sin can be vanquished.

The overriding theme of the interpretation of contract in Letter and not in Spirit may have its origins in the root of the Modern Banking. Follow the letter of religion if not its spirit.

There are three religions that owe their creation to Abraham the first prophet and the prime believer in Monotheism - Judaism, Christianity and Islam. All three have had interpretations of not charging interest. Even Islamic banks of the day, to be competitive, have a profit or loss sharing principle or a return on deposit that is termed a “gift” and the reason for the gift is not given in public interest.

I came accross the Banking Connection when watching the programme Ascent of Money on Fox History and Entertainment..It seems that there is a book by the same name...Searching for it now :-)

Athiest...

I love Marathi...

Not because it is my Mother Tongue

Not because it has more true consonants and vowels than any other Indo Aryan Language

Not because it is the oldest of the Indo Aryan Languages

Not because it has some of the best literature

Not because it has the ability to produce a range of sounds

Not because Kentucky Fried Chicken can be spelt in Marathi however it may be so

Not because Pune has taken the language to a different level of sophistication

Not because it is one language where the choice of words can be a dead giveaway to your district

Not because it has incorporated the word “Machine” for your girlfriend in some places

Not because the public has supported its theatre till date

Not because it shares the Devnagri script along with Hindi

Not because it is the language which can spell my surname right and everybody reads it the same

Not because it has embraced English and morfed in "Marlish" (Marathi + English)

And certainly not because Mr. Raj Thakrey says so

But the language is current enough to give us poetry that can get everyone from kids to senior citizens and especially cynical people of our generation to flock the theatres to go for a programme that is essentially poetry reading. When I told a few non Marathi speaking friends of mine that I am going for a 6 hour poetry reading programme, the reactions were of incredeluity... But that’s where the poet that language and the public come together for an amazing fest of Marathi at its evolutionary best...

As the poet himself says, his age and his study does not qualify him to say anything about god and being atheist or a theist so my own credentials on the subject are not even worth mentioning. But the poem puts forward such a beautiful thought that I had to share it with non Marathi speaking people. Below is the translation as much as possible in letter and spirit...In Hindi

Author Name : Sandeep Khare

Title of Poem: Nastik

जब एक सच्चा नास्तिक मंदिर के बाहर रुकता है

तो मंदिर मे भगवान को ही अच्छा लगता है

की कोई भी क्यूँ ना हो

अपने आप के लिए ही सही

सच्चाई को पकड़े हुए रहने का

जब एक सक्चा नास्तिक मंदिर के बाहर रुकता है

तो होती है संभावन

की भगवान अपना आलस छोड मंदिर के बाहर आने की

एक सच्चा नास्तिक मंदिर के बाहर रुकता है

तो देखता है शून्या नज़रों से

आसपास की चेहेल पेहेल, भाविकों की भीड़

कोई तो अपना बोज़ आपने ही पैरों पे उठा रहा है

इसका समाधान मिलता है भगवान को

इसीलिए तो जब एक सच्चा नास्तिक मंदिर के बाहर रुकता है

तो भगवान को एक भक्त कम मिलता हो शायद

पर मिलता है समाधान एक सहकारी मिलने का

मंदिर बंद होने के बाद एक मस्त अंगड़ाई देके

भगवान बाहर खड़े नास्तिक से गप लडाने आते है

बोलते है “दर्शन देते रहना कभी कभी

पता है आपका विश्वास नही है हम पर,

पर हमारा तो है आप पे”.

मंदिर के बाहर रुका हुआ नास्तिक

परेशन भगवान को बड़े मिन्नतों के साथ मंदिर में भेजता है

तब जाके अनंत साल हम दर्शन ले सकते है

आस्तिकता की शाल में घुटे हुए भगवान की..

Falcons River Rafting and Associated Rants Part 2...

First Up...A very Happy Friendship Day to all.......And now Back to Business....

At last we come to the point where all the falcons are at last landed right besides a lake and living in a tent. Yep that’s right.... We had two tents all of ourselves with 6 places per tent. It was not exactly luxurious accommodation but was suitable for the occasion.

As soon as the bus stopped there was a lot of back slapping and hugging all around. It was really good to see all of them especially Sudarshan, Punit, Hardik, Ranjana and Vishal Tiwari who i was meeting for the first time after college.

If how you spend your journey is any indication of what you are then Punit Singh must be one of the most dedicated persons alive. He got down from the bus speaking on the phone, went to the tent, got his laptop out and started to surf on his newly acquired 3G network enabled Tata Photon Plus travel modem. Before you start to either appreciate his commitment to the job or drop your jaw in awe of the massive amounts of addiction required to stare at a computer screen in such a wonderful place, let me tell you the massive amount of moral conflict he was going through. Actually he was torn between a Falcons trip and a Franchisee meet. One was in Kolad and the other was in Kolaba. UC “F & K” are common in both the commitments but they were as opposite in intention as could be.

Well we had a great dinner after everyone freshened up. Unfortunately, me and Amey were vegetarians due to the holy month of Shravan. So a couple of chickens were spared from a humane end. Post this there was a small hut with a nice veranda built on stilts on the lake. The group went to this wonderful setting where there was a minor scuffle for the chairs. Punit turned out to be the saviour with the songs from his laptop. At last the bottles were opened and the small party started.

Sunny came in his elements with both his drinking speed and his dance skills coming to the fore. We had a whale of a time. Impersonations of people including those present and absent were done. I can’t mention all here due to ruffling of some sensitive emotional feathers, but I believe my bro Kohli is sporting enough, even he would have been impressed with an excellent impersonation of his presentations but on mute (figure that out). Most of them were hilarious and we had a great laugh. Actually we had no business taking over the balcony of the water cottage. It was not booked for us. The people who had actually booked the hut came at last at like midnight and asked tentatively if this was their hut and if we had used their room by any chance. Don’t know if they were polite, a bit cautiously tentative or diplomatically sarcastic. Most of us did not pay much attention but simply walked off after a curt goodnight. Hey we followed the protocol in letter if not in wholehearted spirit. This “letter and spirit” business is the newest defence by India to judge the response of Pakistan against terrorism.

I had to use one of my favourite words “cheeta” in this. Well cheetahs’ are fast but they are sprinters, they cannot last the distance. Same can be said of the Falcons who were drinking there. Everyone had just a couple of drinks but the pace of drinking was super fast. I have to admit that I was absolutely disappointed with this. How can five people not finish half a bottle of vodka and a quarter of whisky? It is a disgrace. There were still a couple of pegs in both the bottles which I think we left for the staff of the resort.

With the reporting time of 8 at the river we had to get up at 630. Some of us retired to our cosy (sorry not so cosy) beds in the tent. A bed was taken over by some ants which had to be unfortunately killed. Also for the mosquitoes we had preventive maintenance. Me and VT spent almost 12 out of the 15 matches left in the matchbox to light 2 “Kachua Chaap” mosquito coils. The rest of the 3 were absolutely untouchable as they were wanted for internal violence by VT (Gold Flakes or Classic Mild I don’t remember).

But not so early to bed for the three Bakars. The last kilometre of the road to the resort is a very small dirt road. With the rains it was in a mess with puddles and mud. And of course it was totally dark. No street lights no lights in the village at the end. There is a thrill in walking in pitch darkness along such paths. With a stick in hand me, Amey and GD went for this walk at one in the morning. Believe me in the pitch darkness every sound is magnified many times and even a small water puddle cannot be judged as you cant really see how big it is. So every step is tentative. Keeda to hum main hai hi. So we went for the walk and while coming back a dog started to bark from somewhere close by. Amey asked GD if he could bark back and GD started to threaten Amey with dire consequences. At last a cats meow was all that came out. And as you may have guessed noting happened. The dog left us alone. Maybe he recognized us as one of his own kind and finding 3:1 as unfavourable odds left us alone. So that adventure done...We got back to the tent, woke up VT and chatted till 230 and at last slept.

After getting up in the morning, none of us had a bath but all of us brushed :-). After coffee, a good plateful of pohe and some slices of buttered bread with an average coffee and an extremely pathetic lemongrass infused tea. A quick photo session and we were ready to be on our way....

It was GD and me who volunteered to be on the rooftop. There were some close shaves with branches of trees at the start on the dirt track but once we reached the main road it was ok. The driver was helping in the painful experience by driving on a high gear at low speeds and making the bus knock around and our behinds were suitably rewarded in the confines of the overhead carriage. But the curse of missed turns and bad directions continued. We had to stop for directions and Sunny tried to use his chaste Marathi for directions from a cattle herder. Even the cattle were stunned by the ruthless assault on their language of instruction.

Falcons are always very adjusting sometimes ridiculously so....We were hopelessly lost and me and GD had no idea of the turmoil in the bus. Suddenly the bus stopped and in a display of consideration for the nonexistent traffic on the road, the bus driver took the bus at the side of road. If we we on the rooftop were at 90 degree angle to the road earlier, suddenly we found ourselves at a 70 degrees angle to the road.... The bus had got stuck in the soft mud on the side of the road...

Thus mirroring the BSE in 2008 out rooftop experience went from Sublime to Subslime....

We climbed down at an awkward angle and then as good MBAs do we did a brain storming session. Decision Making was done on the following options

1. 1. Reverse gear or First Gear

2. 2. Stones for grip for front tires or the rear ones

3. 3. Direction the vehicle was to be pushed

4. And of course the pointless exercise of asking why did we get down from the road?

So once the strategy was decided, we go on to the execution. This took all of 5 minutes and the execution was a bit of a failure to say the least. At last after multiple attempts at all the possible permutations and combinations of the above, I have to say with a bit of shame that the physical force of 8 guys and the mental faculties of 11 MBAs could not get the bus out of the mud...

At last experience won over education and brute force won over strategy. With the driver’s decision for reverse gear and the added manpower of 3 people from the village and stones behind the front tyre, we were able to get the entangled bus back on track. The contact at the rafting place taking pity on us sent a car for us to follow to the site and at last we reached.

The safety briefing was a lesson in what can go wrong and what can you do right to save yourselves and then some more of what could go wrong when you were trying to save yourselves. Of course the disclaimer agreement that signed away my life and limb to your own overexcited hormones (want adventure hah!) did not help. There were quite a few people who looked at each other with eyes that said “This is definitely not a good idea.” A couple of accusing stares by members of the group to a single guy/gal who had made them come here were also seen. We had Amey asking publicly for the Hanuman Chalisa. That took me back to the lift in Singapore where 17 of us were stuck in the lift and Kumud was reciting the Hanuman Chalisa. I am sure that post marriage, either he must have forgotten Hanumanji or would be reciting his Chalisa day and night..... Lo behold the strange coincidence, the guy who was called forward to demonstrate the correct way of suiting up was wearing a SP Jain Management Programme T shirt..

So at last after the gory safety briefing we were suited up. A scramble by all to colour coordinate their helmets, lifejackets and oar paddles followed. VT who is size zero actually got a life jacket that fitted him. That it was looking more like a spaghetti strap bustier is beside the point. A few pics in our suits and voila we were assigned our rafts. Me, Ranjana, VT and Hardik were in one along with a family from Mumbai while the rest of the falcons got another raft all to themselves.

With some pornographic sounding instructions such as front, back, harder & all in, which were ways to conduct yourselves and how to row, we carried our raft to the water and off we were....

The rapids, to be honest were pretty tame. I mean how menacing can rapids named Fishermans rapids and Butterfly cove could be. But well, we had Punit Singh go overboard at the first rapids and scrape his knees on some rocks. The only rapid of note was called Rajdhani. VT was getting tired of all this tame rafting & was just itching to jump in the river. At last after quite some time, we got the go ahead from the main guy. Me and VT jumped in the water spectacularly (for us at least) and floated for some time when suddenly the guy asked us to get back in. It seems it was a wrong spot to swim. So back again in the raft and to get the spirits up we had a few chants led by the Instructor. Some of them were “ Yo Baby”, “Jai Ho” and in the last one we could not join in as it started with “Jigi Jigi” due to obvious reasons (Hardik).

At last for us the high point of the rafting experience started. A two kilometre swim in the swift river. It was awesome. Even the people who do not swim enjoyed it as it takes much more effort to drown in a life jacket as it takes to swim without one. Ranjana was screaming when someone said “Crocodile” and wanted to be on the raft ASAP. Hardik was hesitant to come in the water but the instructor batted him in with the oar and coached him a bit after which he was splendid and fully confident. Me and VT swam and caught up with the Falcons exclusive raft. Amey who is a bit afraid of the water had a chaperone at all times and in the end VT and Amey were not to be found for quite some time. I figure Amey’s mental state in water and VTs life jacket had got something to do with it. Rest all of them were present, visible and enjoying to their fullest. At last exhausted and feebly working the oars we reached the shores to the end of the rafting...

The next hour was spent eating wada pav/bhajiyas/tea and samosas. The bus ride back to the resort was pretty sober with all in their seats and not much of a conversation. Reaching the resort some of us had hot baths and the girls as usual fretted over hair damage which was compounded by the felony of Kanchi in not bringing conditioner, only shampoo, imagine that!!!!!!!

You would be very hungry after 10 km of rafting and 2 km of swimming in the river. Post the baths and packing, the chickens that me and Amey had saved were consumed by the others today. The veg guys had to feast on Chloe (chick gram) so at least the chick was common in both the menus. The chaas (buttermilk) was fantastic.

Everyone was lazing around post lunch and at last we climbed in the bus. The billing took us quite a bit of time as there was a minor misunderstanding. The return journey can be summed up in just a few words. We all were tired; the rooftop people were suffering their consequences which last 48 hours post the act, the radio was the only saviour and even the tea break did not enthused the janata. At last yours truly got down at Panvel amid bye byes and caught a bus from the highway and reached home. The bus after dropping people at the designated points got to the last stop Ville Parle.

Thus ended the Falcons trip. It was awesome and I am already looking forward to another one....