The Financial Expert by R.K. Narayan

Margayya is a complex and entrancing character with a flair for those fabulously involved minor financial transactions which are an integral part of indian life we first meet him sitting in the shade of a banyan tree, advising the people of malgudi how to extract loans from the co-operative bank a brush with the secretary of the bank, and an accident in which his spoilt son balu throws his account book down a drain, cut short his career as a financier; but after a series of amusing incidents margayya grows rich and reverts to financial wizardry