Everyone knows the rush of a new relationship...that heady feeling, the 'what ifs'...
I always thought of a relationship as the beginning of a possible future. Not always in terms of marriage, or happily ever after... but the future nonetheless.
But what happens when your basic premise of normalcy is taken away, and the things you had to offer for that imagined future no longer exist? What if all you have to offer is just yourself as you are now, and that is all.
Is that enough for someone to love you? Is that what someone can not only be content with, but also happy with?
I think I might just find out...
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Justice
I needed to close a bank account. A simple enough thing to do... unless you have a recurring deposit account in Andhra Bank.
It all started with an honest attempt to save some money and not regret that it was all wasted on alcohol and other such...in the end, I had to close down the account and withdraw the money so that I would have enough to give the government. I might has well have spent it on the booze!
Anyway, unlike most banks, Andhra Bank does not have an ECS system. Which means you have to deposit a cheque every month. And if you work normal hours, that means you have to do it either really early in the morning (when the bank is supposed to be open, but ISN'T.. because "the trains are too crowded at that time" as I was told after asking for an explanation), or late in the night, when the bank is closed. So mostly, my cheques were deposited by luck... depending on my good fortune if one of the employees had arrived by 8:30 or not. I have been there on many occasions at 8:00 a.m., which is the 'official' opening time, and there has been no one but the guard there... who looked just about as fed up as I was.
But as much as it annoyed me to keep the account going, closing it was infinitely worse. First, I had to submit my passbook to the bank...coincidentally, the same one they had 'misplaced' when I had submitted it for updation several months ago. There is only one person who can close the bank account at the chembur branch - the never present Preeti. Preeti I know now, is a ghost. She may have worked there at one point, but no longer turns up, or has just left, or will shortly arrive - but never actually there! After two weeks of this (and the chartered accountant yelling bloody murder about my taxes), I finally called in late at work to sort this problem out.
I arrived at 9:00 a.m., a decent enough hour even by public bank standards... only to look upon Preeti's empty desk.. again. Mr. Rangarajan, allegedly the bank manager, lent a patient ear to my complaints - even accepted my complaint letter, which was attached to the request to close the account and then shooed me in the general direction of the outer office with the words - why don't you call Preeti, she will help you out.
Five calls later (still no Preeti), and about an hour and a half after I arrived, Mr. Arun took it upon himself to stop me from pacing and being general disruptive to the business of the bank. All it took was to open Preeti's drawer, rummage around, find my passbook (which I then handed back to them), enter my account number into the ancient computer, write out a cheque in my name for the amount shown in my account. Lo and behold - it only took six weeks to get my money back!
I was fuming for the next one week about government employees, their lax working hours, their even more lax behaviour towards customers and of course their fictional employees. True justice was only achieved when I found out from a friend how much the employees of Andhra Bank are paid... and laughed all the way to a private bank.
It all started with an honest attempt to save some money and not regret that it was all wasted on alcohol and other such...in the end, I had to close down the account and withdraw the money so that I would have enough to give the government. I might has well have spent it on the booze!
Anyway, unlike most banks, Andhra Bank does not have an ECS system. Which means you have to deposit a cheque every month. And if you work normal hours, that means you have to do it either really early in the morning (when the bank is supposed to be open, but ISN'T.. because "the trains are too crowded at that time" as I was told after asking for an explanation), or late in the night, when the bank is closed. So mostly, my cheques were deposited by luck... depending on my good fortune if one of the employees had arrived by 8:30 or not. I have been there on many occasions at 8:00 a.m., which is the 'official' opening time, and there has been no one but the guard there... who looked just about as fed up as I was.
But as much as it annoyed me to keep the account going, closing it was infinitely worse. First, I had to submit my passbook to the bank...coincidentally, the same one they had 'misplaced' when I had submitted it for updation several months ago. There is only one person who can close the bank account at the chembur branch - the never present Preeti. Preeti I know now, is a ghost. She may have worked there at one point, but no longer turns up, or has just left, or will shortly arrive - but never actually there! After two weeks of this (and the chartered accountant yelling bloody murder about my taxes), I finally called in late at work to sort this problem out.
I arrived at 9:00 a.m., a decent enough hour even by public bank standards... only to look upon Preeti's empty desk.. again. Mr. Rangarajan, allegedly the bank manager, lent a patient ear to my complaints - even accepted my complaint letter, which was attached to the request to close the account and then shooed me in the general direction of the outer office with the words - why don't you call Preeti, she will help you out.
Five calls later (still no Preeti), and about an hour and a half after I arrived, Mr. Arun took it upon himself to stop me from pacing and being general disruptive to the business of the bank. All it took was to open Preeti's drawer, rummage around, find my passbook (which I then handed back to them), enter my account number into the ancient computer, write out a cheque in my name for the amount shown in my account. Lo and behold - it only took six weeks to get my money back!
I was fuming for the next one week about government employees, their lax working hours, their even more lax behaviour towards customers and of course their fictional employees. True justice was only achieved when I found out from a friend how much the employees of Andhra Bank are paid... and laughed all the way to a private bank.
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