It was only a question of time before the credit squeeze wreaked havoc in the market causing shares and house prices to dive. Barton knew and if he had any advice to give it was sell quick, before the situation reached catastrophic proportions. Investors could always buy property back once the markets stabilised. Liquidity was the name of the game.
Those hit first would be amateur BTL owners, those with large mortgages and little equity, commercial property owners and those owning heavily mortgaged property in Ireland or in Spain.
Forming on the horizon was the threat of the kind of deflation Japan had experienced after their economic crash in the late eighties, which had already lasted for twenty years and showed no sign of ending as a fresh wave of bad news arrived.
All those who cried out for lower interest rates had only to look at Japan, where the central bank's interest rate had hovered at around half a percent for two decades without stimulating economic growth, its only effect had been to create a huge Yen carry trade market, where speculators borrowed Japanese currency at a ridiculously low interest rate and either reloaned in other currencies at six seven times the rate, or used it for low interest acquisition loans.
Those with vested interests tried to talk the market up pointing to the 'lack of housing', their favourite chimera. It was like pointing to the slums of Mumbai. People without the means could not become property owners, helping them with low cost loans was precisely the cause of the on-going crisis. The same went for BTLs, if low wage earners could not afford the rents then how could there be money in it for investors. The only solution was to provide government housing in exactly the same way as it had been provided by the state after the war.
If the crisis Barton feared became reality the consequence would be falling asset values, job losses, low investment and a fear of borrowing.
Those who pointed to India and China as locomotives for the global economy were pointing to giants with feet of clay. A closer look at the gyrations of the Mumbai Stock Exchange would send any sane person rushing to sell their shares, whilst the Shanghai Stock Exchange had become nothing less than a gigantic betting shop.
*****
Chapter 81
Ryan observed the pandemonium with grim amusement, safely perched on the roof of the Sea Rock Hotel, watching the SkyNews team in action.
He remembered reading in a brochure back at the Maharaja Palace that Kovalam meant coconut grove and was described as an enchanting strip of golden sands, but now it had the air of a bungled evacuation from a third world war zone.
Just as he was thinking that all that was missing were the helicopters, he heard the unmistakeable throbbing of rotor blades, he turned and saw what looked like an army or police helicopter coming in low from the south, above it heavy dark clouds filled the sky.
Davies pointed a finger to the hill at the north end of the beach, indicating to Williams he should zoom in on the large crowd of colourfully clad Indians who, in spite of the restrictions, had gathered to watch the extraordinary spectacle.
Below, dust and fumes were lifted into the air by sudden gusts of wind as vehicles heaved and humped over the unmade surface of the car park. The whole area darkened as the sun faded behind the gathering clouds, the wind gusted, growing stronger by the second as a tropical squall veered towards the town, soon the whole area became a blur, smothered in an angry cloud of sand and dust. The crowd moved in unison like waves on a beach surging forward then flooding back, then suddenly the clouds opened with a violent downpour of tropical rain, almost instantly transforming the car park into a quagmire.
All the good intentions and planning by the local authorities were lost in the melee as families frantically tried to seek shelter, their overloaded shopping bags and parcels spilling open in the stampede, the contents: gifts and souvenirs, bottles and fruit tumbling out, trodden under foot into the mud and the pools of thick grey water that quickly formed in the ruts. Spouses and friends were lost, children screamed, baggage abandoned as the churning crowd, in total pandemonium, pushed aside the hapless aides enrolled to distribute drinks and snacks for the short ride to the airport, their plastic cups flying into the air, as harassed police officers shouted helplessly, waving their swagger sticks in a desperate effort to put order into the growing disorder, the heavy rain transforming their neatly pressed uniforms into sodden bags and their shinny shoes into mud waders.
The Trivandrum City Police Commissioner looked on in dismay, oblivious to the fact his operation, which had been mounted as a demonstration to the world of India's exemplary skills in crisis handling, was being filmed from the roof of the Sea Rock Hotel and would be flashed across countless millions of television screens, breaking the news in Europe and Asia that evening and all through the next day.
Collin Williams filmed as Bruce Davies excitedly issued instructions, the scenes of panic would make world headline news. In his wildest dreams the young television journalist had never imagined filming such sensational footage.
It was three hours before some semblance of order was restored and the buses finally started to get under way. A first aid station had been set up in the Sea Rock hotel where those hurt in the pandemonium were treated for hysterics, cuts and bruises, fainting and one broken leg. Two tourists suffering from heart trouble were transported to Trivandrum by helicopter.
Davies was sure there was better to come and when there was nothing new to film they headed back uphill through the coconut groves to their Toyota waiting on the main road and set off in the direction of Trivandrum International Airport.
*****
Chapter 82
The Aureolus Clinic was a private establishment specialised in major surgery for wealthy Indians and foreigners. Their medical services included kidney transplantation, that is to say grafting a healthy kidney, removed from either a living organ donor or much more rarely from a newly deceased donor, into a patient suffering from renal disease.
It was a recently built and well equipped medical centre, its staff included specialists such as transplant surgeons, nephrologists, urologists, and of course highly specialised assistants and nursing staff.
The benefit of a new kidney was that it enabled the beneficiary to lead a normal life, which in the case of a successful implant could be as long as normal life expectancy in healthy persons.
The next morning Ajay arrived at the clinic for his appointment with the operating surgeon, Harish Patil. He was impressed by the modernity of the clinic that contrasted sharply to what he had seen outside.
'Well, you seem to be in good condition, apart from your kidney problem, which we shall soon put right,' announced Patil, a dry serious man in his middle to late forties. 'As we informed you we have a donor with matching blood type and antigens, therefore the risk of rejection is extremely low.'
Ajay nodded. Since his illness had been first diagnosed he had become well informed on all the medical terms and treatment related to the disease, prior to that point in time he had only been vaguely aware of such medical terms. In the family owned care centre at home in England his role had been managerial and not medical and such details had been far from his centre of interest.
'May I ask who the donor is?'
'It is best the donor remains anonymous, the person concerned is what our law describes as an altruistic donor. I believe you were informed that the donor was recommended by a humanitarian organization,' said Patel a little frostily. 'For your peace of mind the donor is young, in excellent health and will lead a perfectly normal life with his remaining kidney.'
Ajay did not pursue is question.
'First we have to sign some papers, these are part of the legal requirements for all transplants. The donor has been approved by an Authorising Committee and we have scheduled surgery for Thursday. But first things first, before you leave we need some blood and urine samples for confirmation that all is in order, as per the data we have on your file, nothing complicated as far as you are concerned,' he said with a professional smile.
'No problem.'
'In the meantime rest, and no alcohol, we need you in good condition, fully recovered from your journey?by the way is your accommodation comfortable?' he said in a stiff attempt at cheerful banter.
'Yes it's perfect.'
'Good. In the meantime we shall commence your immunosuppressive therapy with cyclosporine.'
'Can I do a little bit of tourism before Thursday?'
'Tourism?'
'Yes, look around the town.'
'Why not, but nothing tiring, it's rather hot here compared to London.'
After visiting the pharmacy and receiving instructions for his coming hospitalization Ajay returned to the house for a lunch and a short rest. Then, after some gathering a little information from the house manager, he set out to discover India, taking one of the many tuk-tuks waiting for a fare outside a couple of nearby up-market guest houses.
What he saw confirmed the idea that India was an enigma; it was clearly a land of contradictions. That morning he had left his apartment, not unlike any modern apartment in London, for the clinic, modern to the point of being futurist compared to many he had seen in the UK, and now here he was in another world on the narrow streets of Fort Kochi.
There were not the crowds or traffic he had seen on the drive in from the airport, though the leafy green of the airy residential district where the apartment and clinic stood slowly gave way to the city's well known, but run down tourist quarter.
He was a little puzzled as it was difficult for him to determine whether the tourist quarter was run down or up and coming, in any case it was far from the description given in the guide book the house manager had loaned him.
Ajay had not travelled much beyond the frontiers of Europe, he had visited his grandparents in Mauritius when he was much younger, but after they had passed away there was little that remained of the family, many of whom had moved to England, it was too far, only his father went home from time to time, no doubt in search of his youth and the fragrances of his lost tropical island home.
What struck Ajay most was the dirt and the dilapidation of many of the buildings, crossing Fort Cochin Park he even saw a goat nibbling at the paper of a peeling wall poster. On reaching the water front and the Chinese fishing nets, he was disappointed by the ramshackle state of the structures, the scene was colourful enough, but the squalor and evident poverty of the small market, and the much vaunted tourist attraction in general, was not what he had expected, to the point he had even wondered if he was in the right place. He decided it was not worth lingering there any longer and asked a tuk-tuk driver to take him to the Dutch Palace, in the Mattanchary district, in the hope of finding something better.
The first European known to have visited Kochi was Vasco da Gama in 1502, where almost a quarter of a century later the explorer died in 1524. It was one of the oldest ports on India's west coast. The streets behind the docks in the Mattancherry district were full of run down warehouses, where betel nuts, cinnamon, ginger, pepper, coffee and other spices were stored.
Though Kochi was the economic capital of Kerala, a port and trading city, it had been slow to industrialise. However, after a long period of economic stagnation it was quickly changing with new investment pouring in, making it one of the fastest growing cities in India.
One of the city's most important sources of income was from the remittances of its large expatriate community in the Gulf States, forced to find work overseas, in often less than desirable conditions, as a consequence of the city's long standing high level of unemployment.
Mattancherry's historic centre seemed a little less run down. Ajay was surprised to see how the much vaunted buildings with their unique architecture were allowed to become so run down. The narrow winding streets were filled with a multitude of shops, stalls and vendors hawking every imaginable kind of wares. The tourist attractions included the Dutch Palace and the Synagogue in Jew Town - as it was called, not forgetting the streets filled with what seemed to be an almost absurd number of tourist shops, selling everything from souvenirs to textiles and antiques to furniture.
Wandering beyond the tourist zone he discovered the throngs of ordinary Indians going about their daily business, he was not overly pestered by the mendicants and children. Ajay was not dark skinned and was perceived as a light skinned Indian, which he was by his father, since many Indians of higher caste were lighter in colour, though that was not necessarily the case in Kerala. Animals freely roamed the streets: goats, cows and dogs, he even saw three small black pigs rooting for food in the piles of rubbish on a street corner.
In a market district vast hordes of human misery churned around in search of their next meal, some slept on the pavements or in doorways, others poked at the dirt on a piece of open land or sat in the shade of their wretched low wooden shacks and makeshift plastic tents. An endless number of small shops sold everything from cooking oil to used engine oil and from betel nut to food. At the water pumps women filled plastic buckets and jerry cans as others washed their feet.
Returning to his apartment he stopped at a broad green square nearby the St Francis Basilica, a scene in total contrast to the not so distant slums, where groups of teenage boys passed the afternoon playing cricket in the sun. Shading himself under the branches of one of the many huge tropical trees that lined the green, Ajay took a seat on the low perimeter wall to rest and watch the young Indians at their favourite sport. It was not so different from an English village green, an almost pastoral scene, except for the heat and a group of poor labourers on a nearby corner, lethargically tending a smoking tar machine from a bygone age, repairing the ruts and potholes in the road.
Women on their way to the basilica passed him by, some wore colourful saris, others western dress. A few of the young men watching the cricket played with their cell phones as groups of school children passed by in their neat school uniforms.
*****
Chapter 83
Trivandrum International Airport lay just ten kilometres along the coast to the north of Kovalam and once the buses were out of the jam they were quickly on their way to the international terminal where a section in the departures area had been cordoned off for the evacuation.
There were normally about twenty flights a day from the airport, which operated day and night because of the country's geographical position on the crossroads between Europe and South East Asia. That day the number of flights scheduled from early afternoon to late evening had been doubled with flights specially chartered for the repatriation of tourists by the governments of their respective countries, including an El Al flight that demanded special security measures.
Davies and his team arrived before the first buses and started to film the preparations that had been put into place to receive the evacuees. Their driver reported two charter planes were already waiting and others would soon be arriving. The operation was already three hours behind schedule.
The first evacuation flight for Stockholm had been scheduled for two in the afternoon, but a snow storm in Arlanda Airport had delayed its departure from Sweden by three hours. The two waiting planes were destined for Birmingham and Gatwick in that order.
In the panic and confusion at Kovalam Beach the message concerning the rescheduling of the buses went unheeded and the first six buses at the airport carried two hundred and fifty Swedes.
At Trivandrum Airport all departing passengers and their baggage were required, immediatly on entering the terminal building, to go through security checks and metal detectors. Once through the main doors there was a waiting area before the check point with enough space for about fifty or so passengers with their baggage, any other passengers had to wait their turn on the pavement outside of the building. After security there was a check-in area followed by passport control points before passengers could proceed to the embarkation hall, four boarding gates were situated in the hall where buses carried passengers to the waiting aircraft.
The airport, like so many others, had been
designed for fewer flights and no longer had the necessary capacity to handle the growing traffic, especially when delays caused flights to pile up.
The Airports Authority had refused an easing of security checks and all departing passengers were required to submit to the usual procedures, in addition the Kerala State Health and Hygiene Authority had installed a thermal imaging system to detect passengers with unusually high body temperatures.
What they had not foreseen was the procedure to be followed in the case a passenger was detected with a high temperature. The installation of the system was more designed to impress the attendant state television cameras, projecting the image of a technically modern India to the world, the only problem was the system had never been used at Trivandrum Airport and the technicians were not fully experienced in its use.
The procedure was slow and resulted in at least two hundred tired and impatient passengers overflowing onto the pavement outside of the terminal, which was not a real problem in itself, as it happened from time to time even under normal circumstances. However, the circumstances were not normal and when the second batch of departures arrived hot on the heels of the first the numbers doubled.
The Swedes once inside the terminal could not check in because of the delay in their flight and when the airport officials tried to prevent them from continuing to enter they refused to budge. First they could not understand the English of the officials, secondly they did not want to be separated from those who had already passed through security and thirdly they refused leave their place to the Brits who they thought were being privileged.
Soon there were hundreds of angry passengers on the pavement outside the terminal. The confusion grew, compounded by the arrival of passengers for the other regular scheduled flights who had not been warned of the operation and for whom the arrangements were more summary. In addition no special plans had been made to change scheduled flights for the Middle East or to other parts of India.
Death of a Financier Page 23
