I was in a taxi with Kishore Bhimani in Karachi, covering the Test series against Pakistan.
Gavaskar’s India versus Zaheer’s Pakistan. A tabloid vendor thrust a paper through the cab window saying ‘Gayi!’
Kishore caught the words ‘Mrs Gandhi…’ from that moving car on Shahr-e-Faisal. He connected the disparate dots in blur, caught hold of his glasses from the side as he was wont to do every 23 seconds, turned to me and said, ‘Looks like something dreadful has happened.’
We didn’t U-turn for the tabloid, but the Mehran Hotel receptionist bullet-pointed (ok, bad pun) it for us with the words ‘Dushman gayi. Accha hua!’
Kishore and I generated the algorithms. Would the tour be called off? Would India disintegrate? Would Khalistan become a reality? Would there be an anti-Sikh pogrom? Would the Army take over? And — I must confess that we both put self-interest first — would the stock market crash?
I stood to lose a fortune. I held 200 shares of Indian Explosives Limited worth around Rs 4,000 and 200 shares of Tinplate valued at around Rs 2,500. For someone who earned Rs 850 a month, I had nearly seven months of earnings on the line.
Zaheer Abbas
This prospect of financial extinction must have been written ear to ear on the face. A day later, when I was interviewing the Pakistan captain Zaheer Abbas, he asked in genuine concern. Was my family safe? Would I want to use his phone to make a trunk call to check? Did I need some money? Could he help me with $500 to return safely?
He didn’t know me; he would never know whether I would repay; yet he asked. Forty years later, I am in my early sixties. There are five things about Zed that I will never forget: the rumaal round his neck while he batted in the 1978 series; his gold-rimmed glasses; his cowboy-like hat; him walking Indian guests through Heera Mandi; his offering safe passage money at Shadman Homes in Clifton.
I wasn’t there in Lyons Range the morning after where my financial destiny was to be arbitrated. But this is what those who attended the trading ring that morning described: large deals had already been done considerably lower on the kerb; the general mood was summed up in that word that most traders used (‘bhasaan’); the markets opened considerably lower (‘Gap me khula’). Brokers cautioned that sentiment was ‘paani, paani’; some said the markets would go into a bear spin for at least five years. There was no Rakesh Jhunjhunwala on TV to calm nerves; his proxy (any broker who had spent more than 20 years on the market) proclaimed: ‘Yeh mat poochhiye bajaar bachega ke nahi; poochhiye desh ka kya hoga!’
The market resisted. Maybe UTI bought. Maybe LIC provided support. However, the market folklore is that it steadied because of one man. A man largely forgotten off the pages of history. Deboo Bhalotia.
Debooji was a pessimist. In stock market parlance, he sold first, bought later (we generally buy first and sell later). Debooji was generally of the opinion that markets were over-priced. He never saw the glass half full. In his world, what was priced well would always get cheaper. If a stock rose, he shorted (sold without owning the share). If it rose further, he shorted more. In his nightmare, so went the joke, was his broker coming to tell him, "Bhaiji, potay ka position reh gayo hain." (We have gone long).
Calcutta Stock Exchange
Deboojo was pessimistically canny. Those who bought the shares he shorted would need to pay Debooji a fortnightly fee called the badla. Debooji made a fortune maintaining short positions — not for weeks or months but for years; the badla charge that he earned fortnight after fortnight made him fabulously wealthy. The wealth he amassed from years of badla inflows from a single shorted stock would make today’s 6 per cent banking return look like a beggar’s loose change.
Back to November 1, 1984. The Calcutta Stock Exchange was in a crisis. If stocks collapsed, those with long positions would be wiped out. If they obliterated, a payments crisis would emerge.
The exchange elders turned haath-jodke to Debooji. They nursed long positions; a sharp decline in stock price (as was anticipated) would ruin most. On the other hand, Debooji sat on a massive short position; the impending market crash would make him richer. The market petitioned: ‘Debooji bachaa leejiye! Please buy our shares, square off your short position, stabilise prices and provide confidence to the market. This market is your Lakshmi. Save it!’
That morning an unusual sight unfolded on the marbled floor of the trading ring of the Calcutta Stock Exchange. Those with petty bull positions — faatakiya in local parlance — watched from the wooden banisters. Debooji turned up in a silk kurta, starched dhoti and red perpendicular teeka. He masticated mildly on paan. He adjusted his Rajasthani headgear.
What followed was an unforgettable sight, possibly never repeated. Dozens of brokers with bull positions queued silently. Each went ahead as per turn. He stated his firm’s long position with words like ‘Do lakh Motor’ (200,000 shares of Hindustan Motors) or ‘Ek lakh Tata Ordinary (100,000 shares of Tata Steel) or whatever they owned on their books. Debooji bought whatever they sold him; he bought everything; he squared off his short position.
India may still be unsteady but the market was saved. Petty investors lived to see the next day.
The following year — 1985 — I made the money of my life, buying into a range of stocks buoyed by the freshness of a Rajiv Gandhi government. It was a profitable time to be young, optimistic and long on the Indian equity market.
That year was the inflection point in the history of India’s stock market. India began to act outside its skin. India’s middle-class aspired to lift itself out of decades of salary plus D.A. and Gandhian austerity. The country began to respond with a body language that culminated in the liberalisation Budget six years later in 1991.
But the turning point of that dramatic transition – that inflection point, that naazuk mod - transpired on October 31, 1984, when a PM collapsed of bullet wounds in her garden and a canny Lyons Range pessimist said a couple of days later ‘Jo bhi beychogay khareed loonga.’
