Money Matters

House cleaning is boring. Culling through the clutter is even more boring. You go through tons of papers and magazines, wondering how you have so much paperwork in the first place. Books, magazines, bills you wonder if you paid, credit card companies congratulating you because you qualified for their premium credit card membership offer (even though you have never heard of the company and have no intention of doing business with them), discount coupons for Macy’s where you know nothing you like is going to fit you, traders trying to sell you insurance, cars, even dates, and so on. The list is endless.

Yet what has to be done has to be done. Reluctantly, I started cleaning through all the paperwork. An hour of frustrating hard work later, I found a bunch of sealed envelopes that I started to tear off one by one, not even needing to look at the contents inside. Internet bills, paid utility bills, discount coupons for travel cruises to Alaska (it’s January dude !!!!). My eyes fell on a particular sealed envelope from a person very close to me. The envelope was not hand written, and had a very business-like feel to it. I opened the seal, only to discover to my delight a $300 check inside it.

How did the check even get in between Alaska cruise brochures? It was dated about 4 months ago. Jogging my memory, I realized the check was given to me 4 months ago, and I had forgotten all about it. Somehow I always thought I had deposited the check. I called up Mr. Surprise Check to confirm if the money was deposited 4 months ago and if I was suffering from an optical illusion of seeing money around me. It seemed I had never deposited the check !!!!

At a distance, I saw my heavily bespectacled mother looming over me with a stern expression, “I told you to be more careful with your money beta. How can you have check lying in between useless documents? There are people in countries dying of poverty !!”

Mother has a habit of referencing everything I do wrong or everything I forget to do to link it to the underprivileged people who do not have the basic amenities in life. For special effects, she converts the dollars into India rupee to make it sound all the more serious. She has a standard currency converter in her head where every dollar, no matter its value in the current market, is worth 50 rupees.

I just saw her scowling at me. 15,000 rupees?

Guiltily yet thrilled, I rushed to the bank to deposit it. I remembered the times when I had accidentally found a ten rupee note tucked somewhere in between the pages of books, unforgotten. Not that I have a habit of keeping money here and there and forget about it. But there is something great about discovering a $300 check first thing in the morning.

Now I pray I get back those $200 cash I had left somewhere months ago and could never find it again.

sunshine