The Famous Paan

This incidence took place long back, when I was in graduation but it is still fresh in my mind and I guess also in the mind of my friends (who were we me that day ). During those days me and my four other close friends were well known in the college for always being together. In our graduation days we had lots of embarrassing, wonderful, enjoyable and weird types of experiences but this one stands out among them, if not the best, but surely one of the best and memorable one.

One of my friend is a Bengali girl and as we all know for Bengalis the durga puja is the most important festivals, so every year we used to go to her place to enjoy and take part in the celebrations, mostly on ashtami (eight day of navratras) since on that day veg food was served in the pandal. Actually there was one more very important and main reason to go to her home during durga puja, her parents used to spend most of their time (including nights) in pandal so we had the full house left to us and thus had complete freedom to do whatever we wanted to without any restriction.

That day after having lunch and spending the afternoon and most of the evening at her house enjoying the old songs, playing cards and chatting, we finally thought to go out, roam around in the famous atta market, Noida, as well as have dinner in some restaurant. After empting all our pocket money for dinner, before going to my friend’s house, we went to the pandal as she had to collect the house keys from her parents.

Though the pandal was glittering inside, it was quite dark outside; even the street lights were dim and far away. While waiting for her outside the pandal, we saw a Paan Wala (person who sells paan) and my friends were tempted at the thought of having the delicious , yummy and awesome Banaras paan, I have never tried it and didn’t want to either so my friend told the vendor to make 5 paans (one of my friend’s friend , now my close friend too was also there with us), he was looking at us blankly so I thought probably he did not understand Hindi as he was sitting near Bengali puja pandal (logically correct right?) and since I don’t know how to speak Bengali so being over smart I gestured to him with my hands (showed him five fingers ) , he looked at me and stated making the paan, I felt proud of myself , and why not ,after all I was able to make him understand what we wanted through my sign language. While he was making paan we got busy in GT (girls talk) Five min latter he said, “Madam hogaya”, so soon? one of my friend wondered, anyways she took the packet and asked how much, he replied, “paanch rupayaa”, even more surprised, another friend asked him again to confirm if she had heard correctly but he again said 5 Rs, so we thought it might be a festival bonanza, thus getting paan at such a discounted rate. We paid him 5 Rs. Meanwhile one of my friend who had taken the packet from the vendor thought she will take out the paan and distribute to us. When she put her hand in the packet and took out the paan ….she had murmurra (bhelpuri) in her hand.

How? Well the “dabbaas” which in the darkness of night we mistook as having spices used in making paan was actually having ingredients for making bhelpuri and the reason he was looking blankly which I thought was because he did not know the language was actually because we were asking him to give something he did not have and when I gestured him 5 he thought we wanted murmura for 5 Rs.

Ha Ha Ha....

Well the story does not end here, after few days , since my friends still had carving for the paan , after dinner at sagar ratana (my friends birthday treat), one of my friend went to the cashier and asked him “bhaiya teen paan hain kya”, he replied, “madam teen kya ek bhi nahi hain”

The Lost Cheque

Last Wednesday a customer came to our bank shouting at the top of his voice, yelling at everyone from the cashier to the accountant and later even at the manager, abusing the bank, the employees, threatening to sue us and blab la, the best part, we did not understand why the hell was he shouting??

After 15-20 minutes finally when he calmed down, we came to know that he had dropped a cheque a month ago in the drop box but the amount had still not been credited to his account. Unfortunately I am the person who does the clearing in the bank so the onus of finding the cheque and handling the ‘irate and dear” customer was on me.

As always, I asked him for the counter file (a custom I follow to get rid of the customer for the time being if I am busy), initially he started shouting again saying you don’t do your work and then trouble us by asking these stupid things etc. etc., I very calmly (against my nature) explained him that by looking at the counter file I would be able to check the details like the chq #, date, etc. and hence track it down. He left grumbling and saying will search for the counter file and come back.

Once I finished with my clearing job for the day, I started the uphill task of searching the cheque, to begin with I checked the entire cheque return bunch (more than 500 cheques), then I checked the pending cheques (post-dated, pre dated, name difference or wrong account #) bunch which was more in number than the return bunch but could not find that cheque. Finally along with the messenger I searched the entire vouchers of last one month and believe me it is the most tedious and worst thing to do, still there was no trace of that cheque. Scared I told my manager that I am not able to find the cheque anywhere. Since it was already 6:30 and much beyond our normal working hours , she said “we will come and see tomorrow”.

Though I left the bank, On the way back, and for the entire evening for that matter I was figuring out where else could I possibly find the cheque and also kept thinking about the consequences and aftermath if I am not able to find it. After one complete sleepless night, I reached bank early to search that one cheque, I searched all over the bank but could not find it. Finally giving up the hopes of finding it, I restored to buttering, pleading and even bribing god, hoping and praying that the person would not turn up but to my bad luck he came as soon as the bank opened , that too with the counter file.

He gave me the counter file and again started shouting and yelling thus spoiling my day and my mood but guess what my buttering god actually paid off , as soon as I saw the counter file, I got the chance to shout back, yell and scold him as much as I wanted and the reason, the counter file had the SBM stamp and not SBI, which meant he had dropped the cheque by mistake in SBM drop box instead of dropping it in SBI and thus the cheque was not cleared for obvious reason, I showed it to my manager and what happened next .. Well I would just say my worst day turned out to be my best day and his worst and I just loved it….

Lesson on effective time management

Recently I picked up a book titled Letters from a father to his daughter by Jawaharlal Nehru more out of curiosity than anything else. Though I have not finished reading the book yet, there are certain aspects of the book that has fascinated me a lot. First and foremost, the immense knowledge, Mr Nehru had in science, history, and geography, to name a few.Today we have vast sources like Internet,print media, mass media etc. through which we can discover new things and gain knowledge about them. Today we can almost find anything we want by just typing the word in Google search engine and hitting enter but at that time, i.e. around sixth seventy years ago when only source of knowledge would have been books, that too limited, to have such knowledge is really appreciable.

Another thing I liked is, his style of writing the letters, the way he has narrated and explained everything in it, simple brief and precise .History is boring for most of us, I remember either sleeping, sketching or day dreaming in my history classes, sometime even completing my homework so that I could play for some more time rather than listening to my history teacher telling us about the Harpan culture, French revolution etc. but honestly the letters I have read so far are not only informative but also interesting,enjoyable and worth reading.

But the most striking feature (according to me) that has left me wondering is the place, time he has written those letters. We all complain about insufficient time, often we give excuses of not having time to call our friends, visit our relatives, read books etc. don’t we? And here is a person sitting in a jail, under hostile conditions, unfriendly atmosphere, under immense pressure, fighting for country’s freedom , still having the will and the patience to write letters. Instead of grumbling, howling, being depressed, he utilized the time he had, took this opportunity to write letters to his daughter. A great idea to be in touch with his daughter who was at that time studying far away in Mussoorie while he was in a prison in Allahabad. By writing these letters he was solving twin purpose of communicating with her as well as educating her about the evolution of mankind, religions, tribes, animals etc. and therefore arousing in a 10 years old girl the the curiosity to learn new things and find more about them. What an effective, efficient and a wonderful way of time management .Isn’t it.

Always throw the litter in the dustbin

I have peculiar habit for which I have been criticized in a friendly manner and made fun of more often than not, whenever I eat something outside; I don’t throw the empty packet or the wrappers including the paper plates, disposable glass etc. till I find a dustbin , in case I don’t find one, I keep it in my purse and after reaching home I put it in the dustbin. This habit of mine has attracted lot of criticism, my friends always ask me to throw them, they argue that nothing will change in the city by this deed of mine and the city will always remain the way it is, dirty and polluted .they say I alone cannot help in keeping city clean so why to carry all these things and why not throw them away, I tell them that neither I am trying to be environmentalist nor I have any intentions being one, and that I understand that what I do does not cause any diff to the city and does not even matter to anyone, it’s just that I don’t like it so I don’t do it, as simple as that.

But yesterday, I had got down from the bus at Ramanagaram and I was walking towards the bank lost in my thoughts, planning for the day ahead, suddenly something hit hard on my arm, I was startled, astonished, for a moment did know what had happened and how to react, it was as if someone had woken me up from my dreams, after few seconds, regaining my composure, I turned around to check what it was.. and guess what, it was a watermelon peal, and where it had come from, well some great guy sitting in the bus, had eaten the water melon, enjoyed its taste and then thrown its peal from the window of the bus, unfortunately it hit me, I looked at that man and he immediately turned other side since he knew what had happened. I did not say anything to him since I knew there was no point in shouting or arguing with him esp. with the language barrier, though I wished that time I knew some foul words in kannada, I cleaned my arm and walked toward the bank as I was getting late but since then, till now I am cursing him and abusing him in my mind for spoiling my dress and my day.

So the conclusion is that by not throwing litter on the road or anywhere around I am not being an environmentalist or whatever but just being a little selfish and preventing myself from being abused by strangers, being scolded or cursed by them and I feel that is a big, a good enough, and a justified reason for doing what I do, isn’t it so ?

Salesman who caught my attention

We were on our way from Mysore to Hunsur, travelling by the KSRTC bus. In these buses, salesperson selling goods is a very common site; people don’t even look at them or care for them except when they are hungry and want to buy something to eat. So initially when this salesman boarded the bus, I completely ignored him but what caught my attention was the method he had adopted to sell his goods. Instead of selling them in the old fashion way in which people neither show interest nor bother to see what they are offering and people like me , prefer sleeping or listening to music while travelling and find these sales person irritating, he had found out a new way, he was showing goods that he wanted to sell which included bed sheets, shirting and suiting etc.one by one to everyone in the bus and was asking the passengers to bid for them , the passengers could start their bid at just Rs10, whoever quoted the highest price won the item. He also kept the passengers interested by giving them small inexpensive gifts such a comb, pens etc. even if they lost the bid. By involving everyone in the bus, he grabbed attention; even I took part in this mini auction and bought a shirt piece from him. In this way most of his goods got sold and he was also able to make profit as some of his goods even got sold at a price much higher than their worth