Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Have a Nice Day!

In a different place, with a different set of friends, I guess my non-academic bachelor days are back into action. That means so back are those leg pulling sessions which we used to have in the past. Every evening, from different corners of Bangalore South, we get together in one of those umpteen Malayalee restaurants in and around Koramangala for dinner. Fortunately as of now I am able to get out from my office at 6 pm itself primarily because these are my initial days in the office. So here is something which came out in one of those dinner sessions.

One of my friends, lets call him O, works for a bank in Bangalore. His main job is to sit idle most of the times a year, ogle ‘attractive’ customers, and then fire up his ass to meet the revenue targets end of the year. So according to O, its hell of a time when it nears March since March 31st is the end of a financial year. Meeting targets, if not approaching people like me and coax us to take loans from his bank, employing people having muscle-packed body to collect money from defaulters and what not. Even for a guy like me who has zero banking knowledge and who thinks the much hyped ‘core banking solution’ sums up to not more than inserting a card, catch the money thrown on your face by the ATM machine and clean your hands with the paper that pops out from the machine as if using a tissue paper, it all seems to be so very eventful.

To continue the story, lemme introduce one more friend of mine to you. Let’s call him J. So one fine morning, close to 12 pm, when J reached his office, squeezing his bike through the Bangalore traffic, fully worn-out and marginally escaped from Lucifer’s hand at times, and opened his mailbox, he saw a forward from O. Since the subject of the mail was ‘Have a Nice Day’ J didn’t think twice before opening it. That was where it all started.

The first slide of the presentation was really interesting. Well, if a beautiful girl with a much more beautiful smile holding a bouquet in her hand wished you good day then even if it’s a photo, no man could say that it wasn’t interesting. J wasn’t an exception either. And he fell for the trap.

The twist happened in the next slide. It said that you would become lucky and would get all the material pleasures you wanted if you take a loan from the bank where O worked!

The third slide was even worse. It said “If you don’t wheedle five people to take loans from the aforementioned bank within two days then you will get injured in an accident with in the next five days!”

These followed in the subsequent slides.

“If you don’t cajole five people with in the next three days then you will die after falling from the terrace in the next six days!”

“If you discard this mail and don’t forward it to 10 people then you will lose 1 lakh from your bank account. Or else you will be raided by the income tax department!”

Heard that from the next day onwards there were long queues in front of O’s bank! He got a promotion this year for exceeding the targets! And J is paying EMIs of two loans!

PS: Purely a work of fiction.