Ex-IITian turned Hindu monk inspires Occupy Wall Street protesters

Rasanath Das, an ex-investment banker turned Hindu Monk, was spending recent Sunday afternoons leading Occupy Wall Street protesters in meditation until police cleared their camp at New York's Zuccotti Park this week.

The 32-year-old monk isn't sure now where his next session will be. He'll keep following the protesters to lead meditation, though, convinced they will only roll back the inequality around them if they find equanimity deep inside.

"Anger won't solve anything," he told Reuters. "We have to work from the heart ... there is so much distrust now."

Das has been a discreet presence at the protests, leading short sessions before making way for other religious leaders to preach at a weekly interfaith service. What he doesn't tell is the unlikely story of how he ended up in Lower Manhattan.

A native of Mumbai, Das studied at the Indian Institute of Technology ( IIT) and moved to the United State in 2000 to work as a consultant with the accounting firm Deloitte.

After earning a masters of business administration (MBA) at Cornell, he started at Bank Of America in 2006.

His specialty was the technology, media and telecoms sector and he dealt in so-called structured products, including mortgage-backed securities -- "the things that blew up, the toxic products" as he put it in a telephone interview.

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