SUNDAY, APRIL 21, 2024
H Narayanan
That day while having my breakfast my smartphone beeped drawing my quick attention. Touching the phone exposed a message that read, “Get your Aadhaar and PAN card number linked to your bank account number today. Today is the last day”. Already getting ready to go to the SBI branch in our neck of the wood for a withdrawal, I decided to tie up my visits to both the banks situated within a stone’s throw distance from each other.
Taking leave of my spouse and stepping out of my house I took a bus to the SBI branch and alighted there within five minutes. After withdrawing an amount of Rs 10000 using my ATM card and shoving it in my pant pocket, I headed to the ICICI branch at a quick pace.
Showing the SMS on my mobile phone to the concerned clerk in the bank, I asked him the reason for sending the same when I had already got them linked together. Telling me not to be bothered about it since there was ample time to get them linked, he disposed of me. Content with his reply I moved towards the exit when a few more account holders of the bank I found approaching him with the same query.
Descending a step or two down the flight to reach the pavement below I went out like a light unbeknown to me and within a few seconds collecting myself I tumbled to the fact that I was in a car with an employee of the same bank beside me asking me to guide him the way to my house.
Shocked with the off-putting message of my sudden fall reaching her lugs from one of our neighbours, my wife kept the gate open looking out with bated breath. It was only later that I learnt one of the employees of the same bank who had noticed me falling all on a sudden shifted me double quick into the car.
In a little while grabbling my shirt and pant pockets for the presence of my Aadhaar, PAN and ATM cards, the wad of currencies withdrawn from the SBI and my purse containing banknotes and specie to the tune of about five hundred bucks, smartphone, watch and my never-failing companion on all my outgoings------- my walking stick------- to my good luck I found to be intact. The fall however did not spare me from its fallouts either. I had bruises, one on my pate close to the crown and the other on my left shoulder over and above an exquisite pain on my left thigh and right flank that luckily spared my ribs unscathed.
That when people in the current mobile phone era seldom miss snapping pictures of their fellowmen falling and tumbling down in public and posting them on the social media, there are some good Samaritans as rare as hen’s teeth too, knocks me for six.
I thank God for letting my fall occur within the bank itself rather than on the road outside in which case I would have lost all those valuable possessions on my person, an act by sheer providence.
