Bossnia – 1
Winter of 86 is quite unforgettable for more than one reason. It was so chilly with icy winds lashing throughout the day and the mercury dropping merrily to 2 or 3 deg Celsius at night. A stiff dose of Bacardi or brandy and hot water would always work marvels on one’s constitution when the climate showed its worst face like that, but who really had a rather fat wallet those days to daily go on a pub crawl?
Nonetheless, Delhiwallahs always managed with the stock phrase muttered in all sorts of tonal variations – ‘chalta hai’ (add the expletive here starting with bh to give the stereo surround-sound effect of hearing the cussword in all its comprehensiveness).
Barely a couple of years ago, I too was a Delhiwallah, a junior officer reporting into KRN sir and braved at least 4 winters with my cashmilon sweaters and cartons of 20-pack Four Square cigarettes. Missus on moving to Delhi from Mumbai on marriage was hell bent on filing the divorce petition solely on this count – incurable Four Squares addiction of an invertebrate smoker.
Officers who went on promotion from south were easily identifiable those days – we were clad in all sort of impromptu winter gear ranging from skull caps to mittens with holes – real babes in the concrete woods that was Indraprastha. And if you could spot someone in a three piece woolen suit in the branch, you can confidently say he is a proper Delhiwallah, a member of subordinate staff.
So, on that fateful night of Winter 86 – it was a Saturday – I locked myself in the Nehru Place branch premises with a few other good souls, being our comrades in arms or armless cashmillon sweaters. Our sinister gang was keying in the entire savings bank customer master letter by letter into the new computer system. It was a taboo to call a computer a computer those days. We had to use the euphemism ALPM which expanded to Automatic Ledger Posting Machine and an allowance to those operating it – not us!
Come to think of those electronic marvels of the 80s, the so called ALPMs! All of them had pint sized brains slightly more than what I am gifted with at birth. And the data could not be stored in a hard disk but you had to use ‘floppies’ – each with a width of 8 inches – a few of them strung together were adequate enough to serve as a glitz costume for any upcoming Bollywood nymph.
Like the B’wood nymphs the ALPMs threw tantrums every now and then. Most importantly these lasses were to be given a well earned rest after continued use for a couple of hours. They simply reached the boiling point. And it was a real comfort to be in front of a hot ALPM when the wholly deserted Nehru Place arcade was engulfed in fog and your bone marrows felt the numbing cold deep inside.
Our gang with cups of adhrak chai (ginger tea for the uninitiated) gulped at frequent intervals and puffing the socially accepted Four Square cigarettes were working through the night like devils and when it was 4 AM the SB Master was nearing completion. Time to have one more Four Square, the last glass of cold chai and catch a wink on the manager’s table before trouping out of the now smelly branch with the malodorous cigarette butts, banarasi paan stains, wet with adhrak chai tea coasters and dog eared savings bank ledgers.
And then the incredible happened. There was a desperate cracking sound of knuckles as if someone’s fingers had dropped down due to snow bite. Have we not read such blood curdling stories in that eternal cemetery of all good English prose called The Readers’ Digest?
We found without any major investigation that the ALPM was complaining loud about excessive use or abuse as the case may be, and then there was a stoic silence. We cajoled the system to reboot with a thousand pranams and patting on the corrugated iron box that was the computer with appreciative utterances of ‘good girl’ but the good girl repeatedly pulled a long face with the the sad news written large on her forehead – the 8 inch floppy we were using through the night is now as corrupt as an unscrupulous politician.
I had to spend the Sunday too at the branch, drinking adhrak tea, smoking Four Square (should have smoked at least 400 squares by then) and keying in all data again (Bojwani, Mirchandani, Jaspal, Makija, Lajwanthi, Munna Bhai and the occassional Serukalaththur Seetharaama Muthu Chidambara Venkata Subramanian etc, the ALPM cutting down the last mentioned Serukalathur Seetharama to size of course!).
We went live from the next day onwards. I sent a report to Boss who was not at all impressed. He instead was really appreciative of my colleague who noted as her / his achievement in the weekly status report that she / he had formatted 1000 floppies during the week. I wrote in my report that I spent a couple of nights at Nehru Place branch with nothing much to add. Boss thought I had a whale of time boozing and partying at Delhi and was sharpening the axe to apply it smoothly to my nape once I landed back in Chennai. Did I say landed? It was not so. I had to take the second class humdrum sleeper train from Pahargunj to Chennai Central while the achiever with 1000 formatted floppies flew straight from Palam to Meenambakkam. Some are born lucky. ‘1000 floppy format seytha apoorva chinthamani’. Even 8 inch floppies and ALPMs tend to be kind to them!