When I was growing up,
the Indian middle class was deeply divided into two sub-castes: those who had
bank lockers and those who did not.
When my father moved
to Bangalore in 1978, about the first thing he did was to open accounts in forty
different branches of nationalised banks in the hope that anyone of them would
honour him with a locker. He even tried
to get a locker at the SBI branch on St Marks Road – which, in probability
terms, is the same as trying to reach the US by riding on a tortoise with
hernia.
Finally, we got a
locker in State Bank of Mysore.
Now, until its merger
with SBI, State Bank of Mysore was the second worst bank in the world, a title
for which there was great worldwide competition. The locker room in SBM had 2
characteristic features:
1. It was on the 2nd floor, with the
sole intention of dissuading those retirees whose principal source of
entertainment was to use them
2. The room had a full-length mirror. More of this later.
Indiranagar in
Bangalore used to be packed to its rims with defence retirees in those days,
all of whom had lockers because of some dumb scheme (Why, I cannot
imagine. “Manager, I have a used
surface-to-air missile. I need a large
locker.”). Generally, defence retirees–
because they abhor civilian life and its attendant inefficiency – spent all
their time opening fixed deposits, closing old ones and threatening to shoot
anyone who comes in between these two tasks.
So, we’d wait until the
assistant bank manager, who looked like a bull dog that had chewed on amla
soaked in lime juice, called you and
pulled out a ring with thirty Godrej keys, all of which looked just the same. He would try one key after another, which
reminded me of Geoff Boycott’s batting because it was so soothing and
sleep-inducing and there was no notable application of intelligence. At last, when a key fitted, the locker would
reluctantly open and he would stride out of the room mumbling deep curses at
having passed the Probationary Officers exam twenty two years ago.
The mirror in the locker
room was placed to enable women to try on their locker jewellery, the idea
surely coming from a bank employee who hated humanity. One particular lady from Andhra would labour
up the stairs to the locker room, her chains clanging like those on a temple
elephant and waiting customers would just go off, see ‘Gone with the Wind’ come
back and take their place in the queue.
It was hopeless.
When my mum made me
the joint holder of her locker, I knew this was clear revenge for the times I did
not appreciate her cooking. But things
have changed at the bank too: every time I go to SBI to close the locker, the
Manager tells me how lucky the bank is to have a customer like me and offers me
a free credit card for life. I have a bigger locker as a result and all it
has is an old Nikon F 80, which, I hope, will be worth half a million dollars
in 2119.
