When long queues waited at ATMs following demonetisation in 2016, publisher Ananth Padmanabhan called author Ravi Subramanian, whose stories are set in the financial services industry, and asked: “Are you thinking what I am thinking?” Knowing full well that Padmanabhan never missed a publishing opportunity Subramanian smiled and said: “Demonetisation it is.” That set in motion an exercise that has now culminated in the publication of “Don’t Tell The Governor” — and the novel has fast climbed the bestseller charts. But Subramanian calls it more than just a coincidence as the book he was then writing – “In The Name of God” (Penguin) — was set in the Anantha Padmanabhaswamy temple in Thiruvananthapuram. And here he was getting a call from a HarperCollins publisher who shared the exact name. That was “divine intervention” as far as he was concerned, and he knew right away the novel had to be written. “Many people went ballistic because the book came some six months before Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi were identified as perpetrators in what came to be known as the PNB scam. I think this happens because as a writer one often thinks beyond the realms of what is obvious. It becomes second nature to look at people suspiciously. I guess criminals are getting creative by the day and writers are creative human beings. Somewhere their Venn diagrams intersect. And that leads to a wow moment in my books lending an acute relevance to reality,” he said.
PM Modi scripted the demonetisation twist, I wrote around it, says crime writer Ravi Subramanian
