Skip to main content

TRAVAILS OF TRANSACTION

I have been the errand boy for money since many years and going back and forth between the banks for various reasons has been my enterprise. I have seen banks transition from manual to digital, from hand-counted to machine counted, stapled bundles to wrapped bundles of currency notes and handwritten to electronically balanced passbooks. Whatever, I may have left in this transition history is due to Google not being able to access the site as my home internet has a narrow bandwidth verging into being more obsolete than the dial up connection of BSNL.



Recently, I drew a wad of notes to deposit in my loan account and as luck would have it the server never obliged. I walked out, back to my home in 41  degrees Celsius, shielded with a face mask and an over sized white apron maintaining my Coronavirus protection and me ready to dehydrate, pining for water.



Yet, the next day I walked again to my holy grail at half past seven in the morning to finish my half-baked project. This time the cash deposit machine was out of order and the guard complained about the public for putting in more money than the machine could take. I duly abandoned the mission. Driven by the date of the deadline, today was the last day to deposit cash in my account as the weekend would ensue the next day. I rushed again just before noon trying to capitalize on the heat and wishing there would be less number of customers.



I pushed the button for a token and my token receipt exhibited 244 while the screen on the cash counter still stood strong at 220,going by the cashier the server would resume  a little after fifteen to twenty minutes. My slow mental calculation cautioned me to be prepared for my turn at around half past one. My to and fro shuttle services commenced again and when I finally reached back to the bank by quarter past one the screen displayed 240.Just in time I thought.



The familiar guard now asked me to use the CDM and I happily stashed the cash. My happiness was short-lived when I checked my account the next day. I had paid generous charges to use CDM. I questioned my logic for being enamored in these times when it is so tough to earn a paltry amount for so many I stood here uselessly paying what I could have given to someone for help.



Digital or manual, I wondered which one I would vote for. Did I correctly hear someone whisper NOTA? . No, I think I would just let it pass.

Comments

  1. UnknownJune 18, 2020 at 7:13 AM

    Very well written article. With mechanization and digitalisation we are loosing human touch and emotional relationship with bank employees. The bank is taking cbarges for all its services

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnkitaJuly 19, 2020 at 6:35 PM

    Amazing read👍

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Night of the Rain

  It was one of those nights when the rain seemed determined to wash the whole town away. Sheets of water hammered against the windows, the roads were nearly deserted, and most people were asleep behind locked doors. My husband was resting lightly, as doctors often do when they know the doorbell might ring at any moment. Sometime past midnight, the bell rang. The emergency night staff called him downstairs. “Doctor, there’s a patient.” When he reached the entrance, he saw two young boys standing at the gate of the clinic porch. The smell of alcohol hung thick in the air. One of them was struggling to keep the other upright. The injured boy was slumped against him, barely conscious, his weight hanging heavily on his friend’s shoulder. “What happened?” my husband asked. The friend spoke with urgency. They had slipped from the motorbike. Even in that brief moment, my husband could tell the injury was serious. Head injury. Possible internal bleeding. It was the kind of case that needed...
Post a Comment
Read more

I was a dentist for 30 years. At 57, I started over, and my biggest asset wasn't experience

I made a decision that didn't sound ambitious on paper: I chose to stay home and care for my mother. It was also the moment my professional identity began to unravel with no obvious next step. In my family, a postgraduate degree was less a distinction than a baseline expectation. So, I did what I was supposed to do.  I had practiced and built a career. For nearly three decades, I remained a dentist doing routine work. What I had, at that point, was a blog. A small one. Hosted on Blogger. Read generously by friends and family and diplomatically described by others as "promising," which, in adult language, means not quite there yet. I decided to bet on it anyway. The Pivot The job market was not kind and certainly not to late beginners. AI had just begun, and then there was me. A dentist. With a blog. And an unreasonable amount of determination to prove. I enrolled in a digital marketing course, less a course and more a controlled demolition of my comfort zone. I was into a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Yoga se hoga… pr yoga kaise hoga? (It will happen by yoga- but how will yoga happen?)

If you have ever tried starting yoga, you know the struggle: motivation fades, and mats gather dust. For me, yoga was always on my bucket list, but what I needed was the intent to start. Then something unexpected happened. My yoga group formed an unusual trio: my 80-year-old mother, my niece visiting from the USA, and me. Every morning at 6:30 am, we gathered not in the garden but in front of our TV to tune into live yoga sessions by Saurabh Bothra. And guess what? Yoga did happen. It wasn’t perfect, but it was consistent. We stretched, laughed, and even dozed off in shavaasan, but slowly, breath by breath, a habit was born. Because sometimes all it takes is showing up together.
Post a Comment
Read more