6 July 2013

The Week Without My Wallet

To Tarun, the caretaker of my wallet and hopefully of my secrets

Song : Chakkar Ghumyo -- Aamir , Keys Wallet Phone - The Lancashire Hotpots


I never thought that this would happen to me. Never for a whole damn week. In some drunken stupor, I left my wallet in a friends car and was able to get it back only after a week. It was quite an interesting 7 days, here are some snippets :


1. At Work

So we have an access controlled office, which means that until you flash your ID card on the small black boxes; the doors will not open. Hence unless you have an access card, you are for all practical purposes stuck. You are at the mercy of your colleagues and the kindness of the guards. So sometimes when I would enter office, I would evaluate in the elevator if someone was going to get off at my floor and would let me in. At other times, I would follow colleagues (even if it meant taking the longer route) because I was immobile if left alone. Occasionally I would make puppy faces at the guards and hoped that they would for once budge from their line of duty, and let me through.  Of course, there were backups such as temporary access cards (or stealing your colleagues'), which I did get issued on some days but not on all days (those were days when I was hopeful wallet would return or I was being over-confident that I didn't need one).

2. Plastic Money

Apologies if this sounds like if I am quoting from a textbook but the beauty of electronic money (debit and credit cards) is that you have money anywhere and everywhere you go. The world is your oyster because money can pretty much buy anything. A week without it is difficult. It puts you in a position where you have to ask your family for money, usually an amount that they consider too much and you consider too less. And this asking (or stealing) has to take place at the beginning of the day - else if you plan to have that Friday lunch/dinner outside; being broke can seriously limit your options (read happiness). Plastic money, not Red Bull gives you wings.

3. Commute

So I take the train to work and like any regular commuter I have a metro card, which is safely stashed in some pocket of my wallet. Thankfully, my mom also has a card - so when borrowing money I also borrowed the card from her. But since I had no safe pocket to keep it in, there were days when I forgot the borrowed card at home - which meant buying tickets at the train station. Now imagine a situation where this young handsome guy enters the train station (like a boss!), checks his pockets for the card - doesn't find it, opens his bag to take out money for the ticket and finds one shining 500 rupee note - the actual cost of the ticket being 5% of that. So not only is there no card, but no wallet that will have change to buy a ticket. Thankfully, this did not happen because I borrowed change from a colleague (insert puppy face). But imagine if it did - I bet you would be tweeting #fml :P

4. Identity Crisis

Last weekend a good friend of mine and I decided to visit a library. We are cool that way - we go to libraries, make noise, disturb other people and wait for the librarian to spank us (that's what she said!). So we are all dressed up and looking good and are getting our security check done at the library and the guard demands ID cards - any ID cards. That's when dark clouds gathered over my head and I could hear thunder, storm and what not. Despite pleading and begging, I was shown the door. Yes, I became the nameless, faceless idiot in the crowd.

5. Pathos of parting and waiting

So a natural follow up question would be why I waited for a week to get my wallet back. I didn't. There were times when caretaker of wallet was busy for perfectly legitimate reasons; and given that I am a corporate monkey I had my own limitations. At times, I would hope that the plans of the wallet changing hands and eventually reaching me would succeed; at other times I would make plans of the wallet changing hands and reaching me. People were not doing a particularly good job at keeping me happy, some were joking about the million dollar loan that could be on my name, while others were just saying "tu toh gaya" (you are gone!). In the end, I had become a pathos of parting and waiting - desperate and dying to see my wallet.


I have my wallet with me now. Thank you Tarun for keeping it safe. As much as I would want to claim that this was a socialist experiment, it was nothing but a product of too much drinking and being damn cool and showing off my wallet to pay the toll at Gurgaon. 


Unfortunately the following will help only when we are sober :



Image : http://i1.cpcache.com/product/596251935/keys_phone_wallet_framed_tile.jpg?height=460&width=460&qv=90