Road to the Bank
My bank is at the end of a road shaded by beautiful old trees. Rusty shield bearers mostly, the ones that will carpet the roads with their yellow russet blossoms in a couple of months. Sheltered behind an ornate fence, statues of venerable philanthropists, educators and freedom fighters gaze down upon the constant rush of people and traffic. What they think of our countrymen today is anybody’s guess. Their eyes are blank, their ears cannot hear, their hearts are carved in stone. Even the statues of Ranade, Jeejeebhoy and Gokhale are made of softer stuff than that. The maidans lie dreaming on each side of the road, the winter cricket season has begun. Dust rises lazily in the still air as the ball hits the pitch, that familiar sound – TOK!! as bat connects to ball in the sweet spot, mingling with the anguished cries of howzzat and catch it! The old clock tower sends its chimes soaring above the old rooftops, keeping time and rhythm alive and well. The notes are rarely heard on the ground.
Sometimes though, there is a sudden serendipitous pause in the din and clatter of city life. If you happen to be walking by just then, the chimes sound sweetly on the quarter, half and full hour.
The corner drinking water well is decorated with flower garlands. It must be a saint’s day for the little community that maintains this well. The water is believed to have spiritual properties. Certainly, there are always a couple of old codgers,caps on heads, nodding away on the benches set out in front of the well, prayer books loosely held in gnarled hands. The young ones come too, in a brisk and business like manner. No time to waste, a quick salute and they’re off to school or college or office. I’m not sure if this is potable water or even if it is permitted to draw water from this well to drink.
Further down, there is a public drinking water outlet – a modern avatar of one that has provided water for at least fifty years. Donations of ornate drinking water fountains or piyalus were common enough in the early part of the twentieth century. It was the highest form of public service, to provide drinking water to a passerby, any passerby. Some are in use even today. It is a sign of the times that not one, to my knowledge, is more recent than fifty years ago. Charity in modern times comes with conditions and provisos. It is no longer a private gesture, for the good of all.
Appropriately enough, this particular drinking water fountain keeps company with the Grand Old Man of India, a book held in one hand, and a rueful smile upon his face – does he too ponder the future of that great document he helped to frame, the Indian Constitution? A friend tells a sweet story of how her husband would walk their little girl to school every morning past this statue. He would cheerfully greet the old man with a ‘Sahebji’ (a greeting this community uses as a sign of respect, acknowledging someone as Sir. In Bombay, everyone greets Parsis with a Sahebji). The little girl would pipe out the salutation too. She is a lovely young lady now and as she walks past a dreaming Dadabhai Naoroji on her way to college, she still greets him with a Sahebji.
I pass by all these luminaries and ahead is the graceful Fountain. She has been recently restored (though with a typically Mumbai touch – a bristling and business like grill, the height of a man, topped with sharp teeth, keeps her well out of reach. Of whom, one is forced to wonder?) and a promenade created out of uneven cobblestones. I’ve never been to Rome but I imagine this must be what the area around the Trevi Fountain feels like. Ours is a far more modest waterwork but still a pair or two of lovers sit at its edge, a man reads a newspaper with ferocious concentration and a couple of street dogs lounge in the sun.
At the entrance of the bank stands another statue, this time of its founder. As employees trickle in, a few stop and bow before the statue, some even touch its feet in salutation or offer flowers. I know this is old fashioned and ought not to be the practice. But it is a gesture that never fails to move me. It speaks of simple things – loyalty, gratitude, respect. Things that seem past their usefulness in our world.
The salutation is the physical manifestation of a phrase most Indians would recognise – Namak halaal. The English translation is an inadequate one – loyalty. This though is something more than mere loyalty. To treat your employer as the nominal pater familias, to revere him. Never to bite the hand that feeds you. In my family, this was a cardinal rule. My father was employed by a pair of entrepreneur brothers at a young age, even though he was a college drop out. He worked for them until the day he retired and treated them very much as father figures. His faith in them, and theirs in him, it has to be said, was implicit, unflinching and lifelong. The portrait of his boss sits in pride of place amongst the gallery of our dear departed. My mother and he agreed to disagree on the level to which one must be grateful to one’s employer. She was a socialist creature and did not believe in kowtowing or grovelling before anyone. To my father, it was no such thing. Just a simple sense of gratitude and lifelong loyalty that does him credit.
Inside the bank, the hall is cavernous and cool. Marble floors, laid out in art deco style, soaring ceilings, and a sense of echoing space. The old staff members, as eccentric and cantankerous as their clients, have long since retired. One cashier used to have a mild case of OCD , counting each bundle of notes three times, and you could sigh or indicate impatience at your own peril. The nostrils would flare, the cheeks would flush and the counting would become even more deliberate. Another staff member was seemingly assigned only to wind the bank’s impressive collection of clocks. Grandfather’s clocks, some with an artistic lamp shade curving over the clock face. Mantel clocks and pendulum clocks. The bank is filled with these venerable time keepers and that old staffer must have spent all day winding this one with a large key, that one by adjusting the pendulum weights and another by calibrating the barometer.
The current crop are rather more predictable, cups of tea to be sipped and gossip to be exchanged before they deign to glance at the line of customers waiting patiently. They know and we know that a bank is the final resting ground for fatalism. The staff also have an emotional sales pitch for the eccentrics – support your community’s bank, open another account with us. They tried it once again on me and backed off when I harangued them about equality and non partisan banking…still, I could feel the strong sense of disapproval emanating from them. What good was I to them if I didn’t open an account and help them to keep their jobs?
As I left the bank though, the large portraits of the bank’s founders stared reassuringly down on me. I like to think they approved of my stand. Banking, aftr all, used to be a more genteel affair in their time – the bullying tactics far more elegant than the blunt request I had just parried.
I head home, a cool sea breeze in my face, past Gokhale artistically leaning on a pile of books, past the clock tower and the maidans, the sacred well and the moustachioed philanthropist-industrialist, comfortable on a throne-like chair. I say Sahebji to the Grand Old Man, and smile at the dogs lolling near the Fountain.