The Inheritors
Neel Chowdhury
Random House, Rs 399

Even before Satyam, family businesses have been mined for stories of intrigue
Now is the perfect time for a business drama/thriller, living as we are in times when economic news — whether of the financial crisis, economic slowdown, or indeed corporate fraud — is at the top of most minds. No longer are the terms shares, debentures, hedge funds, takeovers and the like only the domain of pink papers and those select few who read them. And let’s face it: at least in family-run business in India, there is plenty of drama, intrigue, deception and thrill — all crucial ingredients of a good novel. Neel Chowdhury’s debut novel, The Inheritors, written without excessive literary flourish, but with competent flair, draws on his long experience as a business journalist.

The basic plot is this: Hari Lohia, a Marwari businessman, now in his 70s, runs a large, diversified group of businesses — tea estates, jute, coal, ore, shipping, steel and even a stricken motorcycle manufacturing unit — which he has built over the decades with his own hard work. Lohia Motors, an ill-advised venture into making motorbikes which are way inferior to their locally available Japanese competition, is in trouble courtesy a strike and lockout of the workers led by an ageing Marxist trade unionist Hirenmoy Chakraborty. Lohia and Co, an old economy firm, wasn’t doing well in any case but the failure of Lohia Motors is battering the bottom line and stock prices.

Enter Hari Lohia’s scheming sister, Aruna, who wants to buy out a majority of shares in the firm with the help of her two middle-aged sons, Piyush and Paul. Piyush, a philandering, incompetent and thuggish character is his mother’s favourite and chosen successor, while the sober, bright, Harvard-educated Paul, who left a lucrative and successful career in investment banking abroad to return to the family business, is a reluctant participant in his mother’s scheming plot. Paul, because of unflinching loyalty to his mother and brother, and his superior ability and contacts, reaches out to a friend — hedge fund manager Rajiv Khanna — in Hong Kong to help finance the bid. And tries to win over an impoverished ex-maharajah who by an accident of history holds a crucial amount of shares in Lohia and Co. Piyush uses cruder methods to achieve the same end.

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