A name to bank on, really

K Govindan Kutty

MY first bank couldn’t have been credited with catholicity or Syrian splendour, though it was known as the Catholic Syrian Bank. A creaky ladder led up to a cloistered counter where I took a two-digit gold loan. In a half-century or more, it grew, of course, exponentially. So much so that many a foreign bank not only dealt with it but viewed it suspiciously. The Syrian linkage, they feared, might be more than nominal or innocuous. Business became bad or tardy, queries and quarrels endemic.

Like Syrian poet Maghout’s postman who collected petitions about the community’s woes to god, the bank wrote to its super boss, the Reserve Bank of India. The name had to be changed if the bank was to be saved from the Syrian shadow, it argued. If the postman found god's address misplaced, the bank was vexed with the super bank — which dithered for reasons as mysterious as those for which it endorsed the egregious demonetisation.

At long last it happened, the RBI relented. Let the name be changed and the Syrian connection snapped if that alone would save the Thrissur-based bank from perdition. What was there, after all, in a name? The bankers, both of the scheduled and the reserve lineage, thought for once in tandem with the Bard. Foreign banks need be no more wary of Thrissur’s money-changers merely because of its middle name.

By the way, I am lucky to have no foreign account but not lucky enough not to be warned of the havoc my last name could wreak. So far, I have been only interrogated: how can my name’s last part be tagged with Alphons or Abdullah? As a point of political information, Alphons lost his ministerial berth after the election while Abdullakkutty joined the BJP the other day. With reference to my name, if it is any solace, I can claim a nominal connection with the President’s. That his name landed a former President in trouble is a nominal matter. 

Back to my good old bank, next week on it will have a new name, but not entirely new. Some financial soothsayer has possibly found that it is good to blend the old and the new together, whether wine or a bank’s name. Change the old name, yet don’t change it. Change the Catholic Syrian Bank into something like itself, CSB. Ask not the full form. CSB is CSB is CSB.