Dumping ground

I had this addiction to porn novels in my teens. They are termed 'small book' in my place. I used to buy and stock them.

Then after many weeks I would decide to turn a good boy and dump them all in the near by wasteland. This cycle would repeat in another few weeks.
This wasteland was owned by a rich guy and the neighborhood used the place to dump all their waste.

I believe we all should have this mental black hole where we can dump all stuff which want to get rid off. Waste will regenerate again but we need a space to dump itta intervals

Two men One objective Two reasons

The period called ‘after-office-hours’ is a time for us to rewind and share a laugh with the colleagues. All except the officers would have rushed back home. A stray customer would come in who is promptly and politely shooed off.

One day a guy came in carrying a back pack. He was dressed in formal wear, but not expensive. He came in and asked for the Stressed Assets Recovery cell, which was a floor above (Stressed assets stands for loan defaulters). We presumed his family would have taken some bad debts and this guy would be running from pillar to post to save them.

Some time later he returned back. He had a visible speech defect. I offered him a seat which he refused. He wanted to know if the bank would help him in getting a loan for a textile unit. After shifting to this place I got a chance to come across many aspirants who wanted some kind of loan or the other. Some were genuine and a few were absolutely rogues. All had the impression that ‘the nation’s largest lender’ dished out money for free. This boy seemed very young and absolutely determined. But the speech was causing a problem for us to make out. I offered him a pen and paper, which were refused too.

With very great difficulty he managed to say about his project. But he didn’t have a clear project plan or land. The manager was absolutely stunned that he didn’t have a partner too. He proposed to run this unit alone. I knew from the first second that he would be refused. A publicly listed company would be in jitters about its bad assets every quarter. This has a great chance for turning sour.

The manager tried to convince him that he should route it through the government to get some subsidy.

‘Try to rope in a partner. We don’t think you can make it alone’

With great difficulty he managed to blurt ‘Why not?’

Later the manager told me, ‘Being sincere doesn’t mean you are capable

Then came in another guy in a swanky car that made a lot of noise. He had a expensive watch on the wrist. He wanted to start out a catering services with 15 focal points all over the city. An absolutely stunning idea considering the fact that Kochi is a city of food lovers.

He had all chance to get the loan sanctioned when he fished out the report from his laptop bag.

The first jolt came in when he learnt that only 2/3^rd of the money would be sanctioned by the bank. And no chance for advertising expenses. The guys started blurting out different versions of the proposed project.

In the end it was something like a real estate deal had gone sour and he wanted to pay his debtors!

Lesson-4 The ugly man

Today a man came to the bank. I couldn’t dare look at him, as every inch of his visible body was filled wit tiny tumors. He was very well dressed. I heard strains of conversations he had with the cashier. He had come to pay up his daughter’s fees. My mind flattered on imagining that this hideous looking man has a family and a daughter to dot on. How many different people are there on this earth? Or is it my partial blindness that males people look different?

Lesson-3 King Customer

Until a few years ago, in the so called nationalized banks, the officers were the king. Then people like Mr. Bhatt and the private banks screwed up the paradise.

Today somehow the people have been made to believe that customer is the king. The officers are highly inefficient and lazy and ought to be taught a lesson. The last day we received a suit filed against us by a guy who came in the last day. His problem was that the officer didn’t pay him the proper respect. We had to call him up and beg for forgiveness.

The last day an old lady called me up. She wanted to send her a scanned copy of a document. I asked her for the email address. She suddenly burst up. She was sending us mails every day and apparently it’s a shame that we don’t know her email ID. Inorder to end her babble I told her ‘Oh yes I very well know your email address’. It’s better to search it than extracting it from her. It was not enough for her. She wanted me to quote her address through the phone to reassure herself that the bank read all her letters.

The NRIs, who still maintain that they are mainstay of wobbling Indian economy, would go as far as persuading us to breach the RBI regulations. One woman called us up. She wanted her funds to be transferred from one fund to another. This would invite a penalty. But she threatened us she would ‘search for other options’ if we did so. Someone told the poor lady that her hard earned money was sustaining us!

Lesson-2 The Hurt Locker

Yesterday I happened to see my colleagues laughing over a piece of paper. I went over and they pushed an old piece of paper to me. It had some thing scribbled in an old version of Malayalam. The form of writing and language had been discarded ages ago. He must have been well educated but rustic. I strained my eyes to pick a word or two to pick up the humor. At last they told me what the letter was about.

Apparently an old couple started a locker in the bank years ago. Out of love they had agreed that any one can come up and operate it in the absence of other. Like any good old marriages of the present times, the relation hit bad weather. The old man moved the court and made the locker status ‘joint’. The couple had to come together to operate the locker. He didn’t want his wife to walk away with all the loot.

But the old man’s suspicions weren’t over. He firmly believed that his wife was somehow double crossing him to loot the locker. A few years ago he came to the bank and made a ruckus. The poor old man didn’t have the locker number even. He wrote this letter to the branch manager asking him for the assurance that his wealth was safe and sound.

Interestingly bank doesn’t maintain or monitor the possessions you keep in your locker. It’s a nice secret you can maintain for yourself. And the poor old man didn’t know his locker number too. After over an year the old man returned again yesterday. He made the same old ruckus. Thankfully the locker number was found out. He wanted a reply to his old letter. The manager replied him:

‘Sir please pay for the annual arrears of Rs.1000 towards the locker maintenance.’

Lesson 1

A banker is one person in the world who can regale you with tales from abundant chest of experience. I am talking about the old generation banks where the life is easy and there are no targets to be achieved. A banker assures people money is everything even while very well knowing its fallibility. In this world of pretension people would prefer to unmask in front of the person who takes care of your security.

A humorous clerk in our branch was talking about a film producer client. The earlier manager was in very much awe of the film producer. So as soon as the producer enters the bank, the manager would escort him to the cabin and finish off all his transactions personally. When the new lady manager came in, she was not amused by the producer stomping in royally. She informed him that he can go directly to the counter instead of approaching her.

He burst into unstoppable charade on how he ought to be respected and how the other banks offered ‘better’ services.

The poor chap was doing a blockbuster film at that time. It released in with much hype and flopped with even more hype. The humbled guy was seen with bowed head and had the employees at the bank having some fun at his expense.