Man settles for `20,000 in 10-rupee coins
After waiting for four hours in a queue on Friday, Imtiaz Alam, 38, got `20,000 10-rupee coins in two bags from a bank in Delhi. They weighed 15 kg each.
NEW DELHI: After waiting for around four hours in the queue on Friday, by the time Imtiaz Alam, 38, reached the cash counter, Jamia Cooperative Bank had exhausted all its paper currency.
Alam, a resident of Shaheen Bagh in south-east Delhi, pleaded with the bank officials to give at least `20,000 as he had to buy winter uniform for her child and has to visit Goa on an official assignment for which he needed cash.
“It is a small bank in the neighbourhood. Most of the employees are familiar with the bank staff. When I told them that I urgently needed money as I needed to buy winter clothes for my daughter they said the only thing they have left is `10 coins,” Alam, a public relations professional, told HT.
The coins, all of `10, bundled in two polythene bags were given to Alam. “It weighed around 15 kg each as a reason I had to take an auto-rickshaw to go back home less than half a kilometre away,” he said.
Seeing so many coins, the auto “rickshawallah”, who was not able to get change for `2,000 note he had, asked for some change which Imtiaz happily obliged.
Alam’s wife Sana Hashmi said she was surprised to see Imtiaz entering home with the auto-rickshaw driver carrying the bags full of `10 coins on his head.
“It was beyond imagination. He later told me that he had withdrawn the money from bank,” she said.
His home nowadays has friends and relatives pouring in all the time for loose change.
“I was worried initially that how will I deal with so many coins but as the news spread neighbours are coming to the house asking for change,” she said.
Ahmed is getting several calls from relatives living outside Delhi joking that they are coming to his house for getting change. People are even joking with him on Facebook. “I have got hundreds of messages on Facebook where people have asked me bhai change milega (Brother, can you gives us change),” he said.
With the news going viral on the internet, his friends are even joking that he should get armed guards because thieves might try to run away with his coins.
He has used some of the change to pay as a restaurant bill of `800, `100 to a cab driver and `1,000 to his office boy to buy stationery.