Close Encounters of a Different Kind – My First Tryst with an ATM Machine
This one goes back to 1986 when I was ‘down under’ for my year long Staff Course. We were to travel to Sydney-Newcastle area for the first official trip of the course in the month of March. I had an ATM card since I landed there in January and had never used it (did not know how to use it would be a more accurate description). So I took the first major decision of life against Keerti’s advice – not to carry cash. You don’t know, I told her – this is Australia and not India. I would use the plastic money on ‘as required basis’.
So we flew to Sydney (soldier class in a RAAF Hercules C-130) and were ferried to our hotel at Kings Cross. Iqbal Hussain Qazi– a gunner from the Pakistan Army was my chosen companion for sharing the room as neither he nor I was still at home with the Aussies and thought why not make use of the opportunity to know each other a little bit more. (Iqbal Bhai, correct me if I am wrong.) In the evening, after dinner, we both decided to go for a short walk and also make ‘All OK’ calls to our respective wives from the public telephone booths located on the street. While Iqbal went to make his call, I found an ATM machine and decided to draw some cash using the still unused card with me.
On approaching the machine, I found it had an adjustable half inch wide slit through which one could read the message for the user in the dot-matrix mode. (Those were the early days for ATMs when 15 inch screens were still unheard of in them.) What followed after this is resurrected below:
Machine – Please insert your card in the slot to your right as shown in the figure.
I – Inserted the card as instructed.
Machine – Please enter your four-digit PIN
I – Entered the PIN as required
Machine – Please press D for deposit, W for withdrawal and Q for query.
I – pressed W
Machine – Please enter the amount in figures without decimal point.
I – Entered figure 50.
Machine – 20 X 2 and 10 X 1 or change. Press C to change and ‘Enter’ to accept.
I – Pressed ‘Enter’.
I heard a few whining sounds followed by some beeps, then some more whining and more beeps and then a long continuous beep. I was looking at the cash slot all this while in anticipation of 20 X 2 and 10 X 1 but nothing emerged from that slot. Since the beep was continuing, I looked at the message slit and found this message – WRONG PIN, PLEASE WITHDRAW CARD.
So, I withdrew the card and was weighing the options before me in my mind when Iqbal appeared after having spoken to his wife and asked me if I had got the cash and spoken to my wife. I told him about the just concluded proceedings at the ATM machine. So he advised that I should take cash form him and repay on our return to Queenscliff (the place the Staff College was located). Now, I was in a larger dilemma with international and diplomatic ramifications. Taking money from his Pakistani counterpart would have been the ultimate humiliation for an Indian Army officer – I mean how could he even make such an offer? With a lot of indignation, I thanked him politely but declined his offer and instead, decided to have a second encounter with the cash vending machine.
So I repeated the drill described earlier but the final outcome remained the same – WRONG PIN, PLEASE WITHDRAW CARD.
Iqbal again offered to lend me cash. His logic was irrefutable – I was not taking money from him either in Indian or in Pakistani Rupees but in a neutral currency – the Australian Dollar. There could be no international or diplomatic ramifications for this neutral exchange. But my proud Indian self would have nothing of his logic and decided to have a go at the machine a third time.
This time the outcome was not only different it was also more cryptic – CARD RETAINED BY MACHINE, CONTACT YOUR BANKER. (Notice the missing “Please”?)
Furious after having to suffer the indignity and humiliation of having to take (albeit in neutral currency) cash from a Pakistani officer, I rang up my banker the next day and gave him the piece of mind for taking away my peace of mind. He sincerely apologized and asked me as to where should he arrange to deliver the required cash to me. I told him not to worry as I already had the ‘neutral’ currency from a ‘biased’ party. So he promised to keep a new card ready before I returned next week.
On my return and visit to the bank I was given a new card by the manager with instructions about where to find the four-digit PIN. It was then that I discovered that I had thrown away that part of the paper when my (now confiscated) card came by post to me in January and instead noted the postal PIN written somewhere in the covering letter.
This one goes back to 1986 when I was ‘down under’ for my year long Staff Course. We were to travel to Sydney-Newcastle area for the first official trip of the course in the month of March. I had an ATM card since I landed there in January and had never used it (did not know how to use it would be a more accurate description). So I took the first major decision of life against Keerti’s advice – not to carry cash. You don’t know, I told her – this is Australia and not India. I would use the plastic money on ‘as required basis’.
So we flew to Sydney (soldier class in a RAAF Hercules C-130) and were ferried to our hotel at Kings Cross. Iqbal Hussain Qazi– a gunner from the Pakistan Army was my chosen companion for sharing the room as neither he nor I was still at home with the Aussies and thought why not make use of the opportunity to know each other a little bit more. (Iqbal Bhai, correct me if I am wrong.) In the evening, after dinner, we both decided to go for a short walk and also make ‘All OK’ calls to our respective wives from the public telephone booths located on the street. While Iqbal went to make his call, I found an ATM machine and decided to draw some cash using the still unused card with me.
On approaching the machine, I found it had an adjustable half inch wide slit through which one could read the message for the user in the dot-matrix mode. (Those were the early days for ATMs when 15 inch screens were still unheard of in them.) What followed after this is resurrected below:
Machine – Please insert your card in the slot to your right as shown in the figure.
I – Inserted the card as instructed.
Machine – Please enter your four-digit PIN
I – Entered the PIN as required
Machine – Please press D for deposit, W for withdrawal and Q for query.
I – pressed W
Machine – Please enter the amount in figures without decimal point.
I – Entered figure 50.
Machine – 20 X 2 and 10 X 1 or change. Press C to change and ‘Enter’ to accept.
I – Pressed ‘Enter’.
I heard a few whining sounds followed by some beeps, then some more whining and more beeps and then a long continuous beep. I was looking at the cash slot all this while in anticipation of 20 X 2 and 10 X 1 but nothing emerged from that slot. Since the beep was continuing, I looked at the message slit and found this message – WRONG PIN, PLEASE WITHDRAW CARD.
So, I withdrew the card and was weighing the options before me in my mind when Iqbal appeared after having spoken to his wife and asked me if I had got the cash and spoken to my wife. I told him about the just concluded proceedings at the ATM machine. So he advised that I should take cash form him and repay on our return to Queenscliff (the place the Staff College was located). Now, I was in a larger dilemma with international and diplomatic ramifications. Taking money from his Pakistani counterpart would have been the ultimate humiliation for an Indian Army officer – I mean how could he even make such an offer? With a lot of indignation, I thanked him politely but declined his offer and instead, decided to have a second encounter with the cash vending machine.
So I repeated the drill described earlier but the final outcome remained the same – WRONG PIN, PLEASE WITHDRAW CARD.
Iqbal again offered to lend me cash. His logic was irrefutable – I was not taking money from him either in Indian or in Pakistani Rupees but in a neutral currency – the Australian Dollar. There could be no international or diplomatic ramifications for this neutral exchange. But my proud Indian self would have nothing of his logic and decided to have a go at the machine a third time.
This time the outcome was not only different it was also more cryptic – CARD RETAINED BY MACHINE, CONTACT YOUR BANKER. (Notice the missing “Please”?)
Furious after having to suffer the indignity and humiliation of having to take (albeit in neutral currency) cash from a Pakistani officer, I rang up my banker the next day and gave him the piece of mind for taking away my peace of mind. He sincerely apologized and asked me as to where should he arrange to deliver the required cash to me. I told him not to worry as I already had the ‘neutral’ currency from a ‘biased’ party. So he promised to keep a new card ready before I returned next week.
On my return and visit to the bank I was given a new card by the manager with instructions about where to find the four-digit PIN. It was then that I discovered that I had thrown away that part of the paper when my (now confiscated) card came by post to me in January and instead noted the postal PIN written somewhere in the covering letter.
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