Last Friday I visited Punjab National Bank and had Stephen Leacockian experience. As eacock would say, I got rattled the moment I entered the premises. The ground floor was bereft of people, staff or customers. After getting over the shock of 'the missing branch', I gained some courage to look hither and thither. A hefty man looking more like a bouncer beckoned me from the far end. "What do you want?", he shouted.
"Where is the bank?" I shouted back. He pointed to the first floor. Afraid, and yet keen to know what would happen to my deposits, I rushed upstairs. I had a cheque in my hand, but since fear had overtaken me I could not utter any word. I furiously waved my cheque. The first person who saw me recognised my problem easily (he must have come across this problem with many terrified customers) and asked me to go deeper in. Now I knew I was cornered. How deep inside could I venture? Was my life safe? Finally, a spectacled man at the remotest corner took the cheque from me. Was he going to pay me cash? He said, "Yes, but not immediately; sit". Needless to say, there was no place to sit. "Give me a token", I demanded. His response was curt. "No way, we have no tokens here. This is a temporary layout adjustment." A few more customers came in or got pushed in and I felt a little more comfortable. I would not die alone, I comforted myself. When cash was finally paid to me, I wanted to run away. But seeing that the branch manager was now in, I could not avoid lamenting to him that this was not the right time to renovate the branch when Nirav Modi was talk of the town. He tried to assure me that PNB was a sturdy bank with about Rs. 36,000 crore in capital funds easily capable of surviving a scam of Rs.12,000 crore.I came out with the confidence that the bank can easily face two more such scams.
