There is this thing about banks that I find depressing…For starters it is this one place that reminds me of money and money makes me realise I have got my life priorities all f***** up. However, I also realise that as per Kathmandu standards, it’s supposed to be the most glamorous conventional career path second only to the INGOs (where people’s paychecks are not supposed to be and/or neither are proportional to their quantity and/or quality of work.)

Most my friends work in banks and they are the best people ever. Since I took up unemployment a couple of months back my main job has been to go meet my budding banker friends during their lunch break. I go meet them at the nearest and cheapest places that surround their respective banks. Since both me and bankers come under the same category of people i.e. those who earn very little but tend to spend a lot during weekends and are broke rest of the week, the cheap dingy places suits us fine.

They come all dolled up in their shirt-tie or shirt-trousers duo and we all sit down in the dirty benches and bitch about how horrible it is working in a bank and how the pay is shit and how their bosses are sleazy and how some commonly hated characters are big time ass lickers, how low cut someone’s kurti top was. Day after day the topic is the same. Nevertheless, what’s also typical (for obvious reasons) is that although the job is vehemently and unanimously hated, nobody thinks about quitting for the next 4 years or so. As for me, I love these sessions; as we huddle together like a bunch of cash- strapped teenagers sharing a piece of chocolate cake at Snowman’s and I feel young…its like get transported to the days when the world was still at my feet and I could kick it whichever way I wanted.

But there is this one thing about bankers that is very annoying; they make you open a bank account whether you have the money or not.

A friend mentioned how his banker friend had invited a bunch of them over for dinner and then made all of them open a bank account. Plus they are almost ever ready with a form  (savings ,current , blah, blah).Talk about personalized service, if you dare say you aren’t prepare, they tell you that you can always submit the photo and the ID later!!

Recently the quarter end fever gripped the banks. I happened to step into the loan department of one of the banks. Lo and behold! The hot babes had turned into bespectacled geeks and the men hadn’t had the time to shave. None in the service industry smiled!!

Poor me!! It was no friends week for me. All of my friends were busy retrieving loans, taking care of their files i.e. clients and anticipating the bonus. Finally the quarter ended arrived and YAY party time for me too!!! However depressing, everyone roughs it out for the bonus, is it not?

Makuree writes for catharsis, because she loves learning new things and finds almost everything very interesting for a while  . She somehow wants whatever she does to be mindful of the bigger picture. However this isn’t to say she doesn’t fly, spend too much money, occasionally drink too much and behave really badly .