Who said banking is damn serious? I now know it is sheer fun, if only you are prepared to invest some generous piece of time in it.
It all started with me opening a savings bank account with the State Bank of India branch in our area.. Of course for saving and sentimental purposes all my other accounts are with IOB branch in the same area; this does not include my salary account of course, which is with a so-called GeNNext Bank – also in my place.
Though the IT company I work for is observing a five-day week – it is 5 * 18 when demand arises – I have made it a point to work on Saturdays too at my desk at office, to save electricity and water – at home.
As I was preparing to go to office, it suddenly occured to me that I had not visited my SBI branch for the past one year or so.. very bad indeed.. they may forget all about my account and make it unclaimed..
So, this morning, before going to office, I pulled up my car near our SBI branch, to withdraw some cash and to deposit it in my IOB account.
I entered the banking hall at SBI when a stout security guard encountered me.
‘Do you have a green card’?, he demanded.
‘No, I am an Indian citizen and have no plans to migrate to Obama land now or in the future’.
‘If you have a green card, you don’t need a token.. else, go to the token machine and get your green token.. then you can get your white token’.
He may not be referring to my resident account status… Green card, token machine, green token, white token… I was slowly getting lost in the wonderland of SBI-jargons.
When the next customer who entered gingerly into the premises after me went westwards, I too followed him and found the ‘token machine’ affixed to the wall. You press a key and it spews out a green paper token. Nice contraption that one is.. I took my token wondering what I am to do with it.
The security guard waved me to a wooden bench where 6 men, mostly 50 plus were perched, with anxiety written large on their faces. It appeared they were waiting there for quite long waiting for some kind of divine intervention. There were 4 more rows of benches with more customers, all waiting.
I enquired the sleepy middle aged man clad in bermudas and sitting next to me, whether he is a green card holder. He indeed is one on an visit from USA. And he had the patience to explain the green card in question here has nothing to do with US immigration but is a simple Debit Card issued by SBI. If you have a green tinted plastic with SBI logo and an account to go with it, you can visit the ATM enshrined in an adjuscent room and conduct your transaction without green tokens.
And then, a man in ‘white and white’ appeared carrying a blank A4 sheet of paper. He stood in front of the rows of benches holding high the piece of paper and folding it into two and then into four. He tore it down along the folds making ‘ladies’ hand-kerchief’ sized pieces which he again patiently tore apart into still smaller rectangular pieces.
With the mystery of green card now resolved, I was inently looking at the white and white man. Something in me told he is a member of the subordinate staff, on a critical mission.
‘Do you have a green token?’ he asked me. I showed him what the token machine threw at me. Perfectly satisfied, he asked me, ‘ deposit or withdrawal or tax payment or demand draft?’
‘Withdrawal’.
His face showed annoyance.
”Then you should have taken care to sit on the third bench and speak to the gentleman there’.
Yes, two rows up, there was one more white-and-white clad man holding a plain white sheet of paper and standing erect like a magician ready to perform a conjuring trick.
I now occupied the edge of the third bench and the He-angel in white approached me.
‘withdrawal from home or others?’, he demanded to know.
‘Withdraw from my savings account’, i muttered a reply.
‘Yes, but, is it home or others?’
Luckily my new benchmate here in the ‘withdrawal row/ appeared to be well versed in the SBI-speak and he clarified to me that home account means an SB account held with the same branch and others could mean any other SBI branch account. Fine, that is core banking, SBI style.
‘Home account withdrawal’, I said triumphantly.
He scribbled number 12 on the 2 square centimeter scrap of white paper resembling a piece of toilet paper plucked out of the roll in a hurry, and gave me.
‘If you have any tax payment or draft purchase or withdraw from other, you have to ..’, he added in an attempt to guide me further into the fine art of banking, that is SBI banking.
Yes I know. If I have other service requirements, I have to then move to the last row of benches and get another two square centimetre paper from the third He-angel manning that row.
The hall had 5 tellers, working leisurely and being served coffee from a giant flask which could easily hold 10 liters of the brew. There was a supervising manager sitting next to the tellers who looked from left to right slowly moving his head and then started looking from right to left at exactly the same pace. Apart from this, he did not seem to have any other role and responsibility defined in his service order. This is what you call, ‘overlooking the branch’.
After 15 minutes, my token number was called by the teller call system. I rushed to the teller who with all the time in the world at his disposal, took my cheque and my pass book. With the passion of a connosieur of art, he started admiring the cheque, the pass book entries and even my PAN number scribbled at the back of the cheque (as demanded) along with my mobile number.
Another 10 minutes dragged on before he finally entered the cheque in the system. I peeped into his counter and found all tiny scraps of the ‘white tokens’ strewn around his cabin, giving, for all practical purposes, an appearance of a ‘mutka-jackpot’ bylane in a metro. (About mutka-jackpot, some other time).
He passed the cheque and through the window gave it back to me, pointing out towards the ‘textile shop mannequine of a manager’ rotating his head non-stop.
‘Get his signature on the cheque’, he commanded.
‘But what are sub-staff for, if they are not performing these chores?’
‘Don’t you see they are issuing tokens?’.
So I took the cheque to the Manager who had successfully assembled a small crowd of customers in front of him currying for his favour as it appeared, all the while rotating his head like a SCARA Robot.
I joined the queue with the happy thought that I am banking with SBI in 2013 and not 30 years ago. Had it been 1980s, I would have been made to carry the ledger as well from the clerk at the counter to the manager. And if it had involved posting in more than one ledger (debit sb, credit CA, credit RD`etc), I sure would have been made to carry all the ledgers on my head like a head load porter in Madras Central Station to the ‘God of all things turning their torso from left to right and back perpetually’,
So, the God after a few minutes, graciously affixed his signature defacing or rather beautifying my cheque and gave it back. Now I had to perform the duty of the messenger again – to take it to the teller back.
The teller looked with satisfaction the cheque again, turned it 90 degrees to right, admired it, another 90 deg to right turn, pure admiration.. again another… thank God, the cheque was not circular in shape.. had it been so, he would have rotated it for the rest of the day!
And I was feeling happy I am at last getting money. I could not prevent the creeping of a feeling that it is a dole and not something which belongs to me. SBI has succeeded in detaching me from my money in the account like a Zen master making me and my body and then my soul, all different entities.
The teller looked up at me and announced gravely – ‘ it is not in my queue’.
Again another SBI jargon was thrown at me spinning like a googlie and I think I was almost LBW-ed when he added as a matter of explanation, ‘ the manager’s approval is not in my payment queue.. where could it have gone?’.
‘P’haps to the nationalised bank in the adjuscent premises?’, I was about to suggest when my mobile beeped. It was an SMS alert emanating from SBI core banking system informing me that my cheque has been succesfully passed for payment and the balance now stands reduced to../.
I showed my mobile to the man in search of his queue but he pouted his lips indicating the SMS alert was of no use to him.
A motley crowd of tellers and other staff (pray, some one tell me what is their role in this drama and in the daily routine as a whole?) assembled at our teller’s cabin. Our man ordered the office boy to fill up his cup again with some more filter coffee from the magic flask that never goes dry.
‘Not in the queue but passed and SMS message sent to customer.. strange.. call Ramabadran’.
Every member of the crowd arrived at the same solution when someone else interjected, ‘But Ramabadran has gone to’.
Where is he gone? To the arctic region to say hello to his Eskimo friends or lost his way back home in West Mambalam, traveling in Thar desert on a old camel?
Suddenly one of the tellers got a brain wave, ran to her cabin, looked onto her screen and declared, ”got it.. it is in my queue’. She had just sipped her fourth cup that cheers which might have electrified her neurons.
So, a full 45 minutes after entering the branch, I left with the withdrawn cash and rich in experience with all the SBI-jargons and first hand experience of ‘extremely user friendly, making you feel at home’ banking.
And now.. and now..
If anyone comes to you cribbing about IOB service at any branch, you have to accomplish a two-step task on my behalf :
1) take him to a corner of the room, or if in open space, to the farthest end near the horizon and punch him hard on his nose
2) drag him to the nearest SBI branch and make him watch the proceedings.
You have to take two green tokens from the token machine, of course on entry. Keep them safe as your trophies. They tell you the story of a service, SBI style!