Rewind to 1997.
I had joined my first job in the middle of June.
Received the first salary by the end of June. Prorated to the number of days I was in the job that month.
Looking at the payslip - such a nice thing! Felt elated. Found myself in very high spirits.
Since then, I have been saving money. A substantial part of earning - a minimum 40% was going into savings.
The savings were in low single digit thousand multiples.
They appear small by today's standards! Well - those were the days of lower income, and much lesser expenses.
I did not know what I could do with the month-end savings.
The place of my work was 500km away from my hometown, where my father and family were living. I kept on handing over the surplus-in-my-had to my father - a demand draft by registered post. Those were the days! Forget the modern day conveniences - UPI, IMPS, NEFT, RTGS. A simple account-to-account money transfer was practically impossible, even when the accounts were maintained in the same Bank across branches.
Upon receipt of the DD, my father would inquire interest rates across multiple Banks. He would buy Fixed Deposits from whichever Bank that offered higher interest rates.
In the month of January 1998, my Company had asked me to produce savings proof. They needed it to calculate my income tax liability for the financial year. I had no idea what they meant, nor I knew how to act on their request. Naturally, I passed on the requirement to my dad. Pretty quickly, he got a PPF account opened on my name. I had to visit my home town on that occasion, and collected PPF contribution slip.
My Company's Finance Department had arranged to file Income Tax Returns that year.
1998, 1999, 2000 - years rolled on.
There were annual rises in my salary over the years. The income tax I needed to pay increased (from a few hundreds to a thousand plus, after exhausting Section 80(c)). In spite of that, my savings amounts increased as well. The habit of sending DDs to my father every month, didn't change.
All this time, I had never inquired with my father about the money. There simply was no need to do that. After all, my life was chugging along smoothly. God's grace - my income continued to be well above monthly expenses. Month-end savings were a given. My father's assistance to deal with the surplus was always available.
Early 2001.
A massive heart attack tried to engulf my father. It took a stay of 2 weeks in the ICCU; another 1 more week in a standard hospital room for us to have him discharged home. The agony, stress everyone within our family underwent - can't be described in words.
It was an unexpected incident leaving nothing but a shock to everyone. Arranging cash at the time of discharge was also not so easy; had to take several petty loans from generous souls within the near & dear neighborhood.
The happy-ending situation took away all other pains. I was determined to settle the debts over a period of time.
When I returned back to my work place, my Company pleasantly surprised me telling that the employees and their parents were covered by a Corporate Health Insurance Policy. It was possible to get a major part of the hospitalization costs reimbursed. All I needed was to collect & submit documentation from the hospital in a prescribed format.
We didn't have a telephone at home - my application was in the BSNL processing queue for an year or so. I wrote an inland postal letter to my father, mentioning what I gathered; and that I would be reaching hometown in a couple of weeks to get the documentation from hospital.
My father responded in another inland letter - quoting his happiness and mentioning that he had another surprise for me when I visited home.
I was so eager to go back to my hometown. That very evening, I went to the Railway Reservation Center, stood in a hyper-long queue for more than 2.5 hours and had my travel tickets reserved. No IRCTC those days, no online booking!
...To Be Continued...
