Book Review - Hakuna Matata, Life is calling

Srinivas Yanamandra

About the Author: Hakuna Matata Life is calling by Srinivas Yanamandra who is currently working with a private sector bank and is a Chartered accountant, cost accountant, certified anti money laundering specialist (USA) and a member of International Compliance Association (UK). He is staying in mumbai and is married to Savita and has twin daughters Anagha and Ananya. He has a flare in writing and is inspired by Chetan Bhagat and Ravi Subramanian for writing fiction. This is his first book which is a work of fiction with a mix of his personal life characteristics. Content: Biographic narration of an event which describes a terror attack and involvement. Style: U.K English with use of comedy, sensuality, facts and money laundering/fraud in a simple concise manner. My learning from the book: The writing style is the distinguishing factor. It can be read by anyone and everyone, so I learnt that content is the key to good writing and not the sophisticated or difficult words when you need to connect to the mass. The content is very interesting and the story is an eye opener for people who do online banking and use e-mails quite often. Its explains in a laymans language about phishing and how money laundering can be done if unauthorised people have your personal or financial details. Most important it shows the trust and love in each other (Kaushik and Anushka) in time of crisis. Its the trust of Kaushik that he goes an extra mile to get Anushka out of the terror mess, where normal individual fears involvement. Its gives a strong impression about trust in relationships and the never give up attitude. Summary: The story starts with a women in mid career stage who enters her office at 8:30 pm on Tuesday, 7 January 2009. She works at a call centre at the second floor of Gen-Next Bank building at Nariman point, Mumbai. Her name is Mridula and the author briefs about her

punctuality and her habits. Mridula was one of the persons who was well settled in her job in 2007, but lost her well settled banking job due to recession and she has now joined a call-centre and is determined to move on in life. Along with her daily follow-ups, she was wondering about the state of his close friend Kaushik and was really surprised by her story last month. While she was thinking about the same, she gets her 1st call from the customer and while talking and solving queries of the customer, she was able to identify a phishing e-mail that the customer was talking about. Then comes the story where she narrates the incident that happened to her close friend Kaushik and her partner Anushka which was due to a phishing e-mail. Kaushik was a young energetic person who topped C.A. examinations in inter as well as final exams and he used to give trainings on how to succeed in C.A. exams. In one of his trainings he met Anushka who was a C.A. student then and he had a crush on her since then. On the same day, he was offered a job of a relationship officer with Gen Next bank by one of the senior officials of bank. Here the author uses a mix of comedy in describing married and unmarried women, and in the induction how the different products signifies what. So his career begins at Gen next bank and there he meets two friends Mridula and Amrinder who were good friends. The trio used to spend time together and were good friends who used to go for movies and lunch together. One day Kaushik was out to meet one of the business leader of a leading company to manage his personal portfolio and to his surprise, he met Anushka there and they managed exchange contacts. Then they met in his bank on the context of some banking issue with her account with Gen Next bank. They start dating and Kaushiks parents agreed for their marriage despite Anuskha being an orphan. What could be more better! And then 26/11 terror hits them. They were interrogated with terror suspect in a attack in Garden city hotel. The next morning Kaushik was detained by Anti Terror Squad or questioning of his involvement in attacks as Anushka was the chief suspect in terror attack as per investigations, her bank card was found with one terrorist and certain co-incidence that she was there in hotel when the attack happened and she just left when attack took place. Further her details and banking account was used to transfer money from foreign sources and also her involvement in ATM cctv along with a terrorist. All this along with a failed Lie detector test was going against her. While this development was taking place Kaushil was really caught up as to what is the actual truth and started suspecting her. However, his belief and trust on her overcome the doubtfulness and he started thinking and was supported well by his knowledge, contacts and few helpful people who helped him understand and rephrase the situation. Majorly it was his attitude of never say die helped him along. Police agencies do not have many options but to investigate every possible lead that presents itself. But after all is said and done, even after proving his innocence, which in todays world is not an easy task itself, what emerges is the same common man, bruised and shaken physically, emotionally and financially. As the police investigation was on and facts were discovered by Kaushik in a frantic bid to save his partner and would be wife, Kaushik brings into play his expert knowledge and you

get to know about how Anushkas details were used and account was compromised to use it as a channel to flow the money of terrorist through the system and how the common man gets manipulated. As you read all this you can be rest assured this is not just imagination run wild but the cold reality with which the author is very conversant. It rephrases how account details are picked through phishing e-mails and she ended up giving her banking information to illegitimate people without her knowledge, who further used this information to create a channel by which they can flow their money. It involves transfers and changes in personnel information. You also get to know how to save yourself from such attempts that adds to the knowledge value. Lets see how they managed to get this done:
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Anushka gets phishing e-mail asking for banking information regarding her Gen Next bank account. She chicks the link which redirected her to a website which is quite similar to Gen Next banks website and she ends us leaving her personnel and banking details with the fraud website. The fraudster used her personel information to access her account (online account) and make transfers and changes to phone numbers and other crutial information. The fraudster got a lady called the bank call-centre pretending to be Anushka with all her personnel information and managed to change the address and get new card delivered along with pin number to a different address. They used the account to transfer funds for financing this terror activity and the card was used by terrorists to meet their regular expenses. While Anushka didnt had the card during the attack because she left the card at Kaushiks office the evening before.

These facts were discovered by Kaushik with help of Mridula and one of his friend in another bank who supported him to discover these things. The police investigators were shocked and took a great learning from the attack and the king of report that was supplied by Kaushik. The fraud e-mails, phishing and such advanced technological techniques are now being used by terrorists to be clean and plan their attack in a very efficient manner. With all these evidence, police was convinced about her non-involvement and praised Kaushiks vigilance. Kaushik and Anushka were relieved after that and were out of the mess due to some intelligent work by Kaushik and moreover it is the belief and positive attitude which kept him going. This is how Mridula explains his customer over the phone that how small e-mails which tries to catch your details can land you into a big trouble. Moreover what serious consequence it may happen to personal and society. With this note her customer thanked him and she felt very satisfied with her conversation and the work she did. Conclusion: Hakuna Matata Life is calling depicts the true outlook, lifestyle, compatibility, attitude and nature of promising youngsters, who migrate to Mumbai seeking for career growth. The characters, places and situations are weaved so perfectly that you can envision them. Author has shared the knowledge about net banking, which is must to be known in this tech-savvy generation is a cool tone that you learn all the essentials without even going through the stress of learning complexities. Despite being fiction, book throws at you quite interesting statistics,

information about various topics like twins, love, women, etc. Moreover the catchy one-liners will bring out the Authors hidden sense of humour after the read. The author has handled the sensitive issue of sex sensibly with required dignity. The book also highlights important of right attitude at testing times like recession, terrorist suspect. I like this book because: The book is written in a simple and concise manner without unnecessarily stretching any situation. The story goes simple and the author has used a mix of humour, sensuality, suspense along with facts which is nicely blended with one of the events in the story. Language is simple and the target audience for the book is teens to working executives. The story is a third party narration of an event which is very well blended and it clearly connects the present and past in the story. The book starts with a lady with mid career crisis and small instances which connects the actual story which she narrates to one of her customer. I liked the characters in the book. They are so well blended to make you feel that it can be your or your friend. Further the story is about individuals in the beginning of their career and the challenges, the emotions that they face. The most important part about the story that kept me glued was the money laundering part and how the characters discover that even a small phishing e-mail can take you to such extremes. In this case Anushka, the impacted lady was caught up as a terror suspect because her details were being compromised and she was not even aware as to how it had happened. I could connect the story with my job that I was doing with Barclays Fraud department and I felt proud after reading this book that yes I was a part of the team who work to keep money laundering and account compromises at bay. I could remember my customers who literally used to cry when we spoke to them about their account status. This was the connecting factor for me as I read the book in three hours. Rating: I would recommend this book as this is a short read with in a simple language which gives you a good insight about terror finding and how your negligence can cost you trouble. One would be more vigilant to online fraud after reading this book. Because of the books relevance to me and the smoothness in writing style of the author I would rate the book 7 out of 10.

Book Review By, Partha Sinha PGDM(G) 1st year 2011-2013