A Banker's Mantra

It was the Chinese philosopher Confucius who had said:

You ask credit;
I not give;
You get mad.

I give credit,
You not pay;
I get mad.

Better you get mad!

Most bankers (May our tribe flourish!) take this very sane advice as their mantra. Letting the other person to get mad rather than oneself getting angry is as sage an advice as the saying, ‘Tension leneka nanhi, deneka hai’. ( Don’t have tension; if at all, it is to be given!!!)

The American humourist Mark Twain defined a banker as a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining but wants it back the minute it begins to rain!

Twain may be correct to an extent but one must understand a banker’s plight. He has no money on his own; he makes money out of other people’s money. He is the custodian of other people’s money. He lends one person’s money to some other person in trust. He knows that if a depositor wants his money back, there will still be others who will deposit their money with him and he repays the earlier depositor with the money of the new depositor. He knows that all his depositors will not ask for their money back at the same time. Luckily for the banker, no depositor asks, or can ask, for the same currency notes or the same coins which were deposited by him with the banker. The banker has to return only an equal amount.

If a depositor has to get back the same currency notes or coins, it will not be banking; it will be ‘safe custody’, which is a subsidiary service provided by a banker under which system, a banker receives sealed packets containing valuables for safe-keeping, for a nominal charge.

A banker trusts that when his borrower has earned sufficiently by using the money borrowed, he (the borrower) will return the money with interest. Thus a banker is like juggler. Like a juggler, he throws up hats (lends money) and catches the falling hats thrown up earlier. Like the circle of flying hats, the cycle of money moves round and round. The interest charged by a banker is a little more than what he/she pays and he/she makes his/her dal-roti out of the difference between these two amounts. The poor fellow (banker) manages his money-shop by the inflow and outflow of money.

Another name of Laxmi, the Goddess of wealth, is Chanchala – the eternally moving, never staying in one place. Like Chanchala, money never stays in one person’s hands; it moves and changes hands. Water, when not moving, becomes stagnant, stale and unfit for use . Like water, money remains fresh - and helps one to make more money - only when it is on the move.

At the railway station or the post office, some times another person, who has not brought his pen and needs one to fill up forms, asks for our pen. Many times and wherever feasible, we give him/her only the writing part, retaining the cap of the pen with us. We watch that person while he writes and after writing, if he does not return the pen, we ask for the pen back. The same is the fate of the banker. Coming to Mark Twain's banker's depositor's umbrella, if you borrow the umbrella and do not handle it properly, or forget to return it, the banker has to ask for it back. And if the umbrella is not used properly or is mishandled, it will get damaged and lost - lost not only to the banker but also to the borrower as well as the owner.

Human psychology is such that a borrower may - and is not unlikely to - forget to return the borrowed money but a creditor never forgets it, nor can he afford to forget while a borrower can merrily and blithely do that!

TAIL PIECE

Shakespeare has famously said, “Neither a lender nor a borrower be.” But if everybody follows this principle, what will be the fate of the poor banker?