My Currency Catastrophy...
It was 2010. Most unfortunate things happened to me in this year. You might remember I used to stay away into the main city, for my 11th and 12th grade studies, our car chauffer would often drive me to my school on Mondays or during exam period. One such day I was in a great hurry to reach my school. The car was waiting for me and my dad asked me to take some cash from my mom in order to get some fuel for the car on the way. I ran to my mother, being busy she just directed me to her purse which would usually lie in the cupboard in her bedroom. In a great hurry I reached for the purse and grabbed the first four-five hundred rupees notes kept together totalling to two thousand. I left in a rush without a clue of what was about to happen.
An hour past we reached a big Petrol Pump in the city. I asked the employee to fuel up my car with 2000 Rs worth of petrol. He did the same, I reached for my wallet and paid him the money, he looked at the currency carefully as is customary and then at me and out of the blue says, -Sir, these currencies are fake.
My first thought was the man was joking. But I soon realised it was serious. I didn't have enough cash to pay off the petrol pump, it was just the unfortunate 2000 and a few more hundreds. I had no idea what to do, I have never been in such a situation before. I called my dad and he was shocked, he asks my mother why did she have such notes in her purse. After learning about the story my mother, obviously got mad at me, yelled at me and told me I was a dumb idiot. Well!!! Agree to disagree.
My father told me to hand over the phone to the driver. They talked for some time, making me curious as to how was I going to get out of this dump. My dad has been a businessman all his life and in fact in a very closely associated fields. He knew just the way Petrol Stations work and had the best solution for the time being. He told my driver, since I did not have extra cash on us, we could leave the spare tyre as a bondage, so that they can freely let us go and the next time I visit the city again we would pay them and get it back. The petrol station manager agreed and there we go, a major confrontation avoided. On the way back the same evening, I made a stop to my flat in the city and talked to my sweet tenants who were kind enough to lend me 2000 immediately so I would not need to leave the spare tyre at the station. So we went to the pump again and paid off our dues and they gave us back out tyre and the next day I paid my generous neighbors back.
Circling back to the presence of fake currency in my mothers purse. Several years back when my father accepted cash from a trader as a deal, few of the currency notes turned out to be fake, 4 to be precise. And the trader blindly refused to accept that his bundles contained those. As a result my dad was stuck with those and since there are no safe ways to dispose such a thing, he just gave it to mum and mum decided to secretly stash it so that one fine day by a miracle the banks will accept those and give them back real ones. Oh!!! how clueless....
Anyways, Alls well that ends well. And I didn't go to jail. So its okay I guess. Unless someone from RBI reads this article and arrests me for not reporting or something... :p
An hour past we reached a big Petrol Pump in the city. I asked the employee to fuel up my car with 2000 Rs worth of petrol. He did the same, I reached for my wallet and paid him the money, he looked at the currency carefully as is customary and then at me and out of the blue says, -Sir, these currencies are fake.
My first thought was the man was joking. But I soon realised it was serious. I didn't have enough cash to pay off the petrol pump, it was just the unfortunate 2000 and a few more hundreds. I had no idea what to do, I have never been in such a situation before. I called my dad and he was shocked, he asks my mother why did she have such notes in her purse. After learning about the story my mother, obviously got mad at me, yelled at me and told me I was a dumb idiot. Well!!! Agree to disagree.
My father told me to hand over the phone to the driver. They talked for some time, making me curious as to how was I going to get out of this dump. My dad has been a businessman all his life and in fact in a very closely associated fields. He knew just the way Petrol Stations work and had the best solution for the time being. He told my driver, since I did not have extra cash on us, we could leave the spare tyre as a bondage, so that they can freely let us go and the next time I visit the city again we would pay them and get it back. The petrol station manager agreed and there we go, a major confrontation avoided. On the way back the same evening, I made a stop to my flat in the city and talked to my sweet tenants who were kind enough to lend me 2000 immediately so I would not need to leave the spare tyre at the station. So we went to the pump again and paid off our dues and they gave us back out tyre and the next day I paid my generous neighbors back.
Circling back to the presence of fake currency in my mothers purse. Several years back when my father accepted cash from a trader as a deal, few of the currency notes turned out to be fake, 4 to be precise. And the trader blindly refused to accept that his bundles contained those. As a result my dad was stuck with those and since there are no safe ways to dispose such a thing, he just gave it to mum and mum decided to secretly stash it so that one fine day by a miracle the banks will accept those and give them back real ones. Oh!!! how clueless....
Anyways, Alls well that ends well. And I didn't go to jail. So its okay I guess. Unless someone from RBI reads this article and arrests me for not reporting or something... :p
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