You can’t bank on the future

That should have been obvious from the fact that an organisation which had probably used up a decent-sized forest informing its customers about new schemes, new loans, new bargains, etc, etc, had not cared to drop a line to let us know that they had moved. But yet, in case anyone was in danger of missing the point, it was there, loud and clear, in the sulky glare of the woman at the reception, in the stern manner in which customers were grilled over whether they had tried the ATM/phone banking, before trotting down in person. In the disapproving twist of the lips with which a name was taken down and the long wait before someone deigned to attend to individual problems.

Still that time and the next time I went there I saw people. Lots and lots of people. People clutching cheques and standing in queue; men and women hovering around trying to figure out where they had to go for their particular problem. Confused people. Angry people. Very angry people. The feeling was palpable. As I stood in the long line at the reception awaiting my turn, I heard a gentleman at the head of the queue ask where he could turn his credit card in. Why did he want to turn it in, he was asked. Because he hadn’t asked for it in the first place, he responded with visibly restrained anger.

He would have to fill up a form, he was told and go to the next counter. At which point the man exploded with fury demanding to know why he had to run around because the bank had decided to arbitrarily include him in its marketing schemes. His outburst sparked off a mini storm among the waiting customers.

‘All the time sending cards without asking. One card, two cards, so many cards,’ a middle-aged woman muttered furiously.

‘And saying no charge but charging,’ her companion shouted.

‘And that phonebanking,’ someone piped up, ‘just pressing numbers and getting nowhere!’

‘And madam how long do we have to wait?’

As the furious voices rose, I wondered what had happened to turn a group of well-heeled, orderly bank customers into belligerent protestors? Looking around it seemed to me to be a tangible fear of losing control. It seemed almost as if while the bank had got bigger they had got smaller and smaller. They didn’t need to be asked before being bombarded by junk mail, credit cards, debit cards and all sorts of other ‘benefits’ that they might have to pay for. They had to learn new ways overnight. They had to familiarise themselves with new identities that came in the form of multi-digit numbers. They had to learn to be nimble with their thoughts — to organise them in response to prerecorded questions.

And they had to learn to be nimble with their fingers, punching numbers in time to catch the beeps. They had to overcome their mistrust of machines and figure out how they worked. They had to change. And fast.

And they probably will. In time, the bumps will be smoothened out. All new developments tend to meet with some resistance, particularly in the beginning. But then people adapt, often so well that it is difficult to imagine things were any other way before. On the other hand, as we hurtle into an increasingly techno- and market-savvy world (speaking to answering services in offices, connecting to the world through the net) what do we do about the questions that cannot be answered by computer-fed responses? About the errors that need human intervention? About the smiles and the hellos and the goodbyes we flash if only to grease the wheels of ordinary human exchange? Was the anger I saw in that room not about an uneasy transition but a fear of the approaching loneliness inherent in the age of convenience?