Rae and I are
actively making a list of things we like about India; things we will miss when
we go back to the States. Today, however, I am going to spend my blontry talking
about one of the things I won’t miss. I don’t think I have expressed how
archaic the banking system is in India and how frustrating it is – an oversight
I intend to correct immediately.
Not to put too fine a
point on it, but I hate Indian banks. First, it takes an act of Parliament to
open an account. When I first got here, I was told I would need to open an
account at the bank that MAII uses, so my pay checks could be deposited. In
order to do that, I had to have all of my foreign registration papers, passport
and visa; all my employment papers; an affidavit from our CEO; and dozens of
pages of banking forms. After all that, it still took a week until my account
was actually open. They are so slow and inefficient it is maddening.
This gets reinforced
every month when I do the transfer of funds back to the US. Each month I have
to go through the same routine of signing about a dozen pages of legalese; I
have to provide each time the details of my US banking information (heaven
forbid they might retain that information from month to month); each month I
have to provide a signed, blank check; and periodically (I haven’t been able to
determine any pattern) I have to sign a statement that I am not transferring money
for nefarious purposes. To make matters worse, even though there are seemingly
a dozen bank officers at my branch alone, there is only one who can do the
transfer. So if he is sick, on holiday, or out of the office on business, I
have to wait until he is back and available. Very controlled, orderly, and
inefficient.
Oh here’s something.
There are two kinds of checks. One kind can be cashed but one kind can only be deposited
into an account. If it is with the same bank, the funds are available in a day
or so. However if it from another bank, good luck.
There is another aspect
of this I experience nearly every week when I deposit the funds that people
donate at Church. First, you need to have a separate deposit for cash and
checks. OK, that seems weird but if you insist I guess that’s okay. The really
weird part to me is you need to have separate deposit slips for each check.
Further, while the teller will take and process checks from his or her own
bank, checks from other banks are examined and information is taken but then
the checks have to be put into a separate drop box.
The final frustration
- I think we did mention this at the time it happened – when Rae finally
arrived here, I couldn’t add her to my existing account; neither could we simply
get her a debit card to be able to access funds. No we had to set up another, separate
account and transfer funds monthly over to it. Now on that account we could
both be signers. So, I could be a co-signer on her account but she could not be
a co-signer on mine. If she had been here at the time I initially set up the
account, I don’t know if that would have been true. Perhaps then we could
have set it up as a joint account. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt.
Operationally, things
seem amazingly disorganized. There are computers, but I am not quite sure why
since everything has to done on multiple copies of forms and documents.
Consequently, there are piles of papers everywhere. They always seem, after a
few minutes, to find what they need. Don’t get me started on their cash drawers.
There are no trays or dividers for different denominations. There are stacks of
bills, grouped together (but again no dividers) on their sides, so the
denominations are not even evident. Once again, this whole systems seems
inefficient and prone to error but somehow they seem to make it work.
So, I won’t miss the
Indian banking system. The saving grace is they have adopted ATMs, which is
where I do all the banking I can. But between my transfers to the US and
deposits for the Church, I can’t seem to do everything that way. “Just when I
thought I was out, they pull me back in.”
Now, with her unique
and cheery take on life, here’s Rae!
I will start by
saying that from my stand point the banking isn’t so bad but that’s probably because
most of it falls to Phil. Since we both
have a debit card on my account I had the bright idea that we just close Phil’s
account and move to mine. He had to
remind me that it took him almost 2 months, and many forms to get his check
direct deposited. We certainly don’t
want to cross that bridge again so, two accounts it is.
So, as has been my
pattern of late, I will share a few random thoughts as my part of the
blontry.
A week ago Monday Phil
got a text from our branch president inviting us to FHE at the church at
6:30pm. President Juriel’s wife, Rimpy,
had had a baby boy on the 16th of July. He didn’t tell us that this event was for
them to introduce their baby to everyone. We got to the church at 6:30. When will we learn what 6:30 really
means? There were about 4 people there
when we arrived. As we waited, slowly
people continued to trickle in. This is pretty typical of most meetings or
gatherings. Some of these people were carrying gifts so we started to guess
that this FHE had something to do with the new baby. After a while members of their family started
arriving and finally a bit before 8:00 the Juriels arrived with their
baby. There was a song and a prayer and
a few comments were made about families and then the Juriel’s both spoke, in Hindi. I gathered that they were talking about their
adjustment to parenthood. After this
part of the program dinner was served and people enjoyed eating and visiting.
After doing the
conversion from grams to lbs. we calculated that baby was about 5 lbs. You may be wondering why I keep calling him
baby boy, that’s because they still haven’t named him. Naming a baby here is a family affair and all
the family members get to weigh in on what this child should be named. It requires much counselling, conferring and I
guess some family consensus. As of last
night our little man still had no name.
They were hoping to make the decision by today but I didn’t hear if that
actually happened. Name or no name, he
is a tiny, cute little guy and I finally got my turn at holding him last night.
Last night we had a
missionary fireside which was well attended and it was there that I got to hold
the baby. Here is a picture of
President, Rimpy and baby boy on the night of the FHE. The other picture is of him in my arms last
night.
We left the fireside
early to go to Old Fort for a light and sound show. There are 8 forts here in Delhi, Old Fort
being one of them. The show was
projected on a wall of the fort and basically covered the History of Delhi for
thousands of years dating back to 3000 BC.
Let me just summarize that there were many bloody battles, a lot of destruction
and rebuilding, more battles, the rule of the British and then the democracy of
the Delhi that exists today. One thought that kept crossing my mind was how
lucky I was to be born in the United States.
I struggled with history in school and I think I would die if I had to
take history in India. How do they do
it?
The show was outside
and it was hot and humid and I felt like I was being dinner for a lot of
mosquitoes, but I’m glad we had the opportunity to go. One never knows when you go to things if a
camera will be allowed so we didn’t take ours.
Our cell phones were not affective, so the only picture we have is one
we found on the Internet. It’s better than what
we could have taken anyway.
Namaste.
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