The Situation

The first round seat allotment of CCB 2009 (AIEEE) comes out. I find that I’m getting my first choice, Computer Science and Engineering at National Institute of Technology, Calicut

We’re supposed to report at the college for admission any day between the 1st and 5th of July with some documents and 2 demand drafts. One of Rs. 24,000 and other of Rs. 1,000 both drawn in favor of Chairman CCB – 2009 payable at Warangal.

I’m planning to leave home for Calicut on 1st morning and report there on 2nd.

The time is around 1PM. Dad is busy; leaving no one other than me to draw the DD. I’ve never drawn a demand draft. Honestly, I’ve never gone to a bank alone. And I’m now forced without any option. Banks have a funny system of timing. So it’s practically impossible for us to draw the draft later if not now.

Somewhat hesitantly, after a 4-5 minute persuasion by dad over phone, I leaving home.

Just a stupid fact: The weather is really humid, it’s raining moderately.

The Journey

I left home with a bag and an umbrella. The bag had a school notebook with a cheque book inside. I started walking towards the bus-stop, still excited about the allotment news and texting friends from my new Nokia 5130 XpressMusic, enquiring their results. I caught a cranky and slow bus before reaching the bus-stop. (Maybe they stopped because it was raining or something. Even bus drivers become considerate when the climate turns rough!)

Anyway, I started repeatedly playing “Khabar Nahi – Dostana.mp3” the moment I got into the bus till I got the feeling that my destination is near – State Bank of India, Panayapally. The last time I went there was a week ago with dad in car, so it was pretty hard knowing I was almost there while traveling in the bus. This area of Cochin is not familiar to me as I rarely travel by bus to it. All I knew was there is a place called Chullikal in close proximity to my destination (thanks to location updates by my friend, Nitheesh who stays at Panayapally).

As I was saying, the moment I stopped the song, I started worrying about getting down at the right stop. Asking fellow passengers was an option, but I didn’t feel like doing it. And hence, I got the idea of using Google Maps on mobile. I must admit that even though it sucks out your balance, it’s a pretty handy app.

I zoomed in to some location where I hoped I was in real-time. I was looking for cross roads as they’re easy to identify from maps. I noted a cross road called “Rameshwaram Canal Road” and voila! within 5 seconds, I saw a Cochin Corporation signboard outside with the name “Rameshwaram Canal Road”! Next location on the map was Chullikal. The bus halted for a few seconds and moved on. I went to the door expecting to see the SBI branch anytime now. I spotted it and got down at the next stop.


View State Bank of India, Panayapally in a larger map

The Bank

I entered the bank. It’s got 4 counters in the front plus a cash counter. Counters 1 and 3 were manned when I reached there. I approached counter 3 and asked the lady sitting there for two draft slips. It was handed over after around 20 seconds of searching. Seriously, these bank people lack enthusiasm! I went to a seat in front of counter 2, filled up the “Drawn in favor of”, “Payable at” and the “Date” fields. After that, as instructed earlier, I called up dad to ask what to fill in the other fields which looked totally weird to me. A six minute find-this-write-here session helped me to fill up the whole thing. I copied the same stuff to the second slip and thankfully didn’t make the mistake of copying the amount.

After filling it up, I asked the lady at counter 1 what to write on the cheques. Filled up both the cheques and gave over everything to the lady at counter 1. She started typing using only her index finger in the computer in front of her. You can imagine how slow it’d be to enter stuff like C-C-B C-h-a-i-r-m-a-n – 2-0-0-9 etc using a single finger. After she finished that part, she didn’t know what branch to choose at Warangal. She started consulting with all some of her colleagues. The one at counter 3 ran some search and came up with 4 branches at Warangal after around 5 minutes. Still these people weren’t satisfied. They didn’t know which one to choose.

As I got bored waiting, I started thinking of how to finish this faster. I opened Opera Mini on my phone and googled for “sbi branch locator“. The first result took me the a search page where I searched by city and located 8 branches. I randomly choose one of the branches having most of the features mentioned on that page and told them to check whether that branch was available. I also gave them the branch code which was also mentioned by the branch locator. They were truly impressed by the capabilities of my phone

After this, the stuff was handed over to a guy who had just arrived in counter 2. He entered some stuff into his computer, made the deputy manager and manager sign on the the slips and printed the draft. I had entered the bank at 1:30PM. It was now 2:30PM!

After another use of Google Maps to find a road which connected to a parallel bus route, I headed back home and reached 3PM. It was only after mom told me to come for lunch quickly that I realized that I had skipped breakfast!!

This is my first real-world bank experience. Because of this, I’ll never be shy to deal with bank people anymore.

Hope I’ve bored you enough. The comments section is waiting for you to flame at me

Thanks for reading!