Visits to State Bank of India are not frequently celebrated for the experience, especially if the branch is not one of the new-fangled, air-conditioned, coffee-dispensing ones. And yet such a foray some years ago proved to be unexpectedly rewarding, if not a unique experience.
 
The branch is at Kalighat, one of Calcutta's oldest localities, dominated, as can only happen in India, by a very holy Hindu temple the sanctum sanctorum of which is supposed to contain a severed-finger of no less than the Goddess Kali, a red-light district, and ancient Victorian markets called Kataras. As if all that were not enough, a Greek church and a tram depot lend even more charm and ambience.

The branch has been serving the area for a very long time, dating from SBI's Imperial Bank of India days. Its premises are old and were almost inviting with a decrepit, period charm until it suffered rude modernisation in the wake of competition. The competition came mainly from the ATMs of Johnny-come-latelies like ICICI and HDFC, which surround the old behemoth like a shoal of piranhas massed to launch a killer attack on a beached whale. 

I had dropped in at about six thirty in the evening, a time in those dark days of winter and liberalisation when even the Babus of SBI had to work. I found the manager, whom I wanted to meet, sitting in his cabin with a customer. The manager waved me to a chair and indicated that he would finish with the other customer before he attended to me. The customer was an elderly, very-obviously-Bengali gentleman, dressed in a sparkling, white, starch-pressed silk shirt the kind of which must have been popular in the 70s or even before. Yet it looked new. This he had complimented with a pair of pyjamas, clean but un-ironed and topped it off, or bottomed it out, as one might say, with leather slippers. He was chewing paan, mildly sweet smells of which were wafting all over the manager's cabin and was sitting with a very aggrieved expression, head bowed and hardly talking to the manager.
 
It seemed that some moments had passed in this apparent state of non-business for it continued for a minute or so after I entered. The manager then gently entreated his customer to accept his advice and reminded him that although the bank would have liked to accede to his request, the computers simply wouldn't allow it. At this the man looked up with baleful eyes and said in a half-whisper, seemingly blaming fate as King Lear might have done when he discovered the rascality of Goneril and Regan, “So you'll make me a new customer.” After a pregnant pause, he added, “And after half-a-century of growing old with you.”
 
The manager seemed chastised by this, for he lapsed into an apologetic silence that lasted for over a minute after which he renewed his entreat in his softer voice by pleading “But, Mr. Banerjee, we don't have a way out (kono rasta nei).” At this, Mr. Banerjee's eyes suddenly twinkled and his face became flushed with colour and he almost rose from his chair to tell the manager, “No Way Out! Do you know when I heard those words the last time in this branch? Do you know?” The manager looked baffled and slightly disappointed too for he must have been entertaining some notion that he had managed to guide the interview to a successful, if not a particularly happy, close and it now seemed evident that that was not to be the case for some more time.
 
Mr. Banerjee, though, it was plain, was clearly on a new high. “Bishwanath Babu, whom I shall never forget, for he was a cashier here for twenty five years, was the person who last said No Way Out in this branch,” he was saying expansively, “and do you know when? It was the late sixties, Calcutta was in the grip of the Naxal terror, a bank dacoity was in progress in this very branch, and Bishwanath Babu was standing spread-eagled in front of his strong room, telling the armed dacoits – No Way Out – Kono Rasta Nei!”
 
The manager mumbled his ignorance of Paleolithic history which poured some more fuel into the by-now-raging fire in Mr. Banerjee's bosom. “How would you know? Were you even born then”, he demanded of the manager in his single sly aside of the evening, and continued, "The robbers fired and Bishwanath Babu took the bullet. He had the sense to duck at the last moment and so the bullet, instead of killing him, just grazed his left hand. Some months later, when a grateful management asked him his choice of reward for his act of bravery, Bishwanath Babu expressed the simple wish of being allowed to serve in this branch and asked for nothing more." Mr. Banerjee ended his story triumphantly, satisfied that he had made a telling point but the manager looked frankly bewildered, unable to link the story to his customer's banking travails.
 
This was eventually understood at the other end of the table and necessitated an explanation which went: “And you sit there and tell me – No Way Out! In this branch and that chair, you should think twice before you say those words – kono rasta nei – again!” The point now taken, the manager resumed his supplicatory manner and started mumbling his faint entreaties. “What can I do, Mr. Banerjee, if my systems don't allow it? I would have liked to delete your father's name from the account and let you continue as the account-holder, but the software simply does not permit it. If the first account-holder expires, the account has got to be closed and a new account opened in the name of the survivors. Please do that, Mr. Banerjee, you will not suffer any financial loss and you shall see that with Core Banking, our services are better than ICICI and HDFC.”
 
Mr. Banerjee sat and listened patiently, for I imagined that he had by now become resigned to his fate, and said – “Yes, but you don't understand, do you now? If you close my old account and open a new one, you will be making me a new customer then. But I am not new, I have been coming here for fifty years now!” 
And then he got up and shuffled away - the living embodiment of W.B. Yeats’ “An aged man is a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick"- having given up all hope of a just world in the time of internet banking and nanotechnology.
 
All the same, I do not think that I have ever heard a complaint made with such passion and resignation together, or even a more moving and poignant one.