AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

CRANK'S CORNER

        Human beings, de-spite the  gener-ally held belief that  they possess a sixth sense which differentiates them from the unthinking creatures, regularly do things that even a brain damaged orangutan wouldn't attempt to. Applying for a home loan ranks high up on this totem of thoughtlessness. Don't believe the advertisements showing a happy husband and wife, smiling bigger than an Agarkar's wide, coming out after meeting a loan disbursement officer. Those ads were perhaps shot while the couple's kids were held hostage by the financial institution that they were plugging for.

        Don't think of a loan unless you have enough money to start your own bank. The first and foremost financial lesson that they teach at banking schools is never lend to a man who needs money. But if you have lots of cash with you (as your uncle is an MLA or your aunt is an MP), then they wouldn't mind waking you up on a rainy night and stuff some cash in your pockets. It doesn't matter even if you hadn't applied for money. Bankers do this as a matter of fiscal policy founded on strong economic grounds. They have to show NPAs every year. Only then will the government make budgetary allocations to them.

        The other thing that those applying for a loan need is, yes you guessed it right: lot of ink in their pen. The amount of signatures that anyone applying for a loan is called to make would, in sheer volume of letters, dwarf the entire series of Harry Potter books. When you give your photo along with the loan application, the punctilious bank officer would naturally be not satisfied merely by the fact that the mug in the photo has all the features that you possess. Bankers generally try to get a confessional writing from the photo that it is you. But otherwise they will settle for a signature across the photo, which immediately provides the much-needed evidence that it is indeed you. This is based on the strong scientific principle, which several Tamil films have taught all of us, that there may be at least seven persons in this solar system looking like you. But none of them will be able to write like you. Bank officers are, from time to time, sent to training to precisely upgrade themselves with such sterling knowledge.

        Anyway, nobody can figure out why the banks want so many signatures of the same person. Perhaps it is a hobby for loan officers to gather them like stamp or coin collecting is for some of us. Many loan-seekers develop extreme case of tennis elbow by just signing the papers. But banks have this gruelling routine to separate the men from the boys. The reasoning could be that those with fragile elbows cannot be expected to carry the burden of the loan and its interest which have a lot more digits than the actual money borrowed.

        This naturally brings us to the matter of how they calculate the interest on loans. Calculating may not be the right word here. I think they normally think up a huge number by adding as many zeroes at the end and generally work out a formula, which as an answer will provide this number. And since Indians develop rashes all over their person when they try to do multiplication involving numbers with more than two digits, most of the numbers that bankers come up with are accepted as they are.

        The banks are also particular in collecting enormous details, the size of the Pacific ocean, about you and your family. By which I mean, you have to remember the person who used to sell icecreams outside your school in the third standard. The banks don't generally ask for his name. It is is enough if you merely provide his horoscope and his inner thoughts in triplicate. Of course, never ever venture near a bank for a loan without the actual samples of your DNA, and the man who actually discovered the DNA (without him how would the banks know that it is the DNA that you have provided). Banks also usually demand, again in triplicate, the photocopier that helped you to copy all the documents that you are supposed to attach with your loan application. This is to ensure that the copies are original. The good thing is that the banks and financial institutions thoughtfully don't return these documents. If they did, no man would ever find space to live in any house, as the papers you file with the loan application need at least half of the Amazon forest trees to be destroyed to make.

        But why have banks set such a tall order that no sane human being can match up to? You figure this out while I go looking for a gun - the loan officer is due any moment to check whether I exist.