Face Off

I had to tell you all this funny incident which took place 3 days ago. Me & one of my pals went to ICICI atms coincidently on the same day at 2 different places.

SCENE 1, ACTOR-myself

The ATM near by my home has 3 useless machines which have an uncanny sense of intelligence or maybe a hidden face recognition software installed which tells them whether to dispense money or not. So, I always enter with a sense of disbelief so as not to be taken aback!

There went my card in machine 1 --> Out came the msg : 'Your transaction was not accepted'. See, I told you! I then moved on to machine 3 so as not to waste my time on 2. "Tweeee", the machine gulped the card as if it was telling me, 'Hey fuck off ... you are not getting your card back'. Entered my pin, money & lo ! out came the msg - 'You have entered the wrong PIN, please reenter'. So, I reentered, not knowing that was the last chance. 'Sorry you have crossed the limit of PIN retries. Your card is blocked.' SHIT!!! now what... days of poverty! With a feeling of destituteness, I walked back.



SCENE 2, ACTOR-my pal

Driving back home, my pal was searching for an IDBI atm. He came across one, stopped by, and the moment he was entering, the security guard came out & said, 'bannd padlaye sir'. He then came across a second one few blocks away, but passed by, looking at the crowd outside it. After hovering around, he came by an UTI atm. As soon as he fed the card, it puked out saying that the entered PIN is wrong. He didn't bother to try a second time knowing the calibre of an UTI atm. Finally, out of sheet frustation, he got by an ICICI atm & after repeating the rituals twice blocked the card.


The next day in office, after exchanging our experiences, we came to a conclusion about how pathetic can ATMs be & how feeble IT security can be. So, our next destination was the nearby IDBI atm, where we filled the reqd forms to reset the pins. There was this cute gal attending to us, whom we had already letched mercilessly. She said that the cards will start working after 4 hrs.

I, as an Indian, decided to check one day later, to be on the safer side. But to my utter dismay, I again got the same msg. GODDAMNIT!!! I then called my pal, told him abt this issue & asked him to check his. Meanwhile, I went to one of the main IDBI branches, where Lord Krishna gave me this idea of checking in the adjoining ATM one last time. I took out the card, looked at it in the same way as it was at me, and inserted it. And what do I see ! The screen read 'SOHAN SUNIL RAO' which, incidently, is my pal's name. All this while, we were carrying the other's card & trying to act smart. And the funny part is, we actually blocked each other's cards the very first time we visited the ICICI atms.

So, how did this happen? We then recalled the day we both had gone to this computer hardware store to buy stuff & ended keeping each other's cards. So, we were actually carrying the other's card for the past 1 week. Hey, Mr. John Woo ! If you are reading this, please do make a movie. Our cards don't cost much :))