One used computer, two little girls….

It was really embarrassing: my grocery bill for one month was left outstanding when my family disappeared from the scene, abandoning me to fate and future. A petty grocery shop, doing poor business, managed by a simple naïve man. His principal business was probably mine. It must have been hard for him, collecting the total dues at the end of month of supplies fro me. But I cleared each bill promptly by 4^th the following month. All well till, as many here know, my home went kaput. This outstanding due was one among hundreds left without being cleared by those that had been entrusted my life and the funds with.

A full three weeks after I returned to city, the extent of my losses came as a stunning realization to me. In lakhs. Right from the telephone bill, electricity, credit cards….jewelry, furniture, everything. You name it, I owed money for it. It took me years to settle every outstanding. Some settlements made me red faced. The phone department whose bill I fianlly cleared after eight months of disconnection, refused to provide me a new line, because, they said, I was blacklisted for being a chronic defaulter. But I have paid, every penny, with fine, in full, I remonstrated. Nope, you haven’t returned our two instruments yet. Instruments? The blighters had even taken the phone instruments away.

I requested the department to reconsider, and one kind senior engineer, who happened to know my father who was his one time senior in the services, told me I could apply under a new name. New name? Yes, just apply, not as Dr. Arunachalam Kumar, but as Dr. Kumar Arunachalam. The computers cannot read your new name under the defaulters list and will approve your application. So, even now, the Mangalore city directory lists me in the alphabet K and not A, as was all these years.