The history behind the numbers on the screen.
Scams, crashes, rituals and the people who built Dalal Street. The market makes more sense once you know where it came from.
Every Diwali the exchanges open for a single ceremonial session, brokers worship their account books, and a new Samvat year begins. Where the ritual comes from, what people actually do in that hour, and what the record says about buying on it.
The circuit breaker tripped before ten in the morning, the index closed with the biggest percentage fall in its history, and a national lockdown was announced the next evening. What the day felt like, what the people who sold did next, and why the recovery is the part worth studying.
In the 1850s a few dozen men traded shares under a banyan tree outside Bombay's Town Hall. One cotton boom, one spectacular bust and several evictions later, they had a street, a rulebook and the institution that became the BSE.
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