06 April, 2008

How Termites Ended The Dreams Of One Dwarika Prasad

What would Shakespeare have done with Dwarika Prasad? Consider this man’s tragedy: first his wife leaves him, and he is alone in his old age; then his savings get wiped out because he kept his money in a bank locker and termites ate it all.

Prasad claims he had kept Rs 4.5 lakh in cash, FD papers, Kisan Vikas Patras and National Savings Certificates worth Rs 2.5 lakh apart from some gold and silver jewellery in the locker two years ago. He showed the perforated currencies and documents to the bank authorities, who in turn showed him a notice pasted on the wall near the locker room requesting customers to remove their important papers from lockers as termites were eating up the documents!

Needless to say the notice had escaped his attention, and now his money, a lifetime’s work, his Gogol’s overcoat, was gone. The bank in question was a government bank, of course, though I would hesitate to attribute any metaphorical significance to the termites.

(Link via email from MadMan.)