Before I left Mumbai to reengineer my life in Santiniketan, I was naturally paranoid about finances. All my friends who met me then, questioned the wisdom of giving up salaried employment for the unknown. This increased my nervousness. All that seemed certain was what I had managed to save in my years of slogging in Mumbai, and I was determined to ensure that all of it was safe.
As I went through my list of bank account, demat account, mutual funds, PF, PPF, post office savings and so on, each had its share of complication of transfer. But I managed to get through most of them. It was then the turn to visit my post office where I held three accounts: savings, monthly income and NSS.
When I visited the Mumbai Mukhya Dak Ghar, Mantralaya, the man at the counter told me very helpfully that there was nothing that I needed to do then. His advice was that after I shifted, I would have to apply to the local post office for a transfer. Happy in the thought that I would have one less form to fill for the moment, I breezed out of the post office and afterwards out of Mumbai.
Secure in the knowledge that my money was safe with the postal department, I did not bother about the transfer for a whole two years. When I did get there the person at the counter looked at my precious pass books with a deep frown.
He was very surprised that I had not submitted for transfer in Mumbai and said that now it was going to be very complicated and it would take at least a couple of months. Santiniketan is a small town and needless to say all his colleagues joined in to admonish me for not having submitted papers in Mumbai.
I apologised for misunderstanding postal department rules and added that I was willing to wait the couple of months that it would take. I handed in all the applications, pass books and so on, and took back duly acknowledged photocopies. This was in May 2005.
Around August was the first time I bothered to enquire about the progress of transfer. Again I was told how I had made a mistake by not applying to the originating post office. Of course, my pass books had not yet come back from Mumbai. I was told to come back in October "after the Pujas".
And so I did. The man at the counter greeted me with glee. One of the pass books had arrived (he couldn't tell me which one) from Mumbai and had been forwarded to Suri (the district headquarters) post office.
There seemed to be a ray of hope and I was asked to come back the next week. Next week when I went back, the man at the counter (we were now getting to know each other really well) told me with a grave face that Suri had returned the pass book because it was not accompanied by an AT number.
No news yet of the other pass books. I didn't care about what an AT was. All I wanted to know was whose fault was it. "Mumbai, of course," said the man at the counter. "They have forgotten." "Why did you forward it to Suri when you knew that Mumbai had forgotten the AT?" I growled. "Yes that was a mistake," he said, not looking at all apologetic.
Well into November and still no signs of my pass books. I decided to do what I should have long ago. I stood in the middle of the post office and yelled. Not knowing how to cope, the men at the counter huddled together and came up with a solution! They said they would write to Mantralaya post office in Mumbai and ask them to hurry up.
This letter (undated), which I was given a copy of, bears testimony of my lung power. Paragraph no. 4 states, "Depositor too much hopeless and she requested for your early action." I was told to come back end of January! Many more trips in vain later, two of my pass books finally arrived end of March and as I write this I am still awaiting the third.