The Blue Passbook
He was being gently ushered into the curious, almost ritualistic world of passbook banking – not in a glittering tower of glass and steel with polished counters and soft instrumental music, but in a humble branch by the Creek, where the musty scent of old paper mixed with the warm, lilting flow of Hindustani street-speak.
This was savings banking in its most earnest form.
It was Dubai in the late seventies. The city had not yet grown into the restless giant it was destined to become. Still, cranes dotted the horizon like skeletal birds, and roads stretched cautiously into the sand. Taxis were battered, buildings squat, and the people – like him – came from elsewhere: Bombay, Kandy, Kerala, Karachi. They arrived with letters folded into airmail envelopes, stories passed between cousins, and dreams wrapped in modest ambition.
Inside the bank, it was cooler than the sun-blanched street outside, though never truly cool – just enough to make you linger. The old air conditioners, probably installed when the building first opened, wheezed and coughed like tired men remembering better days. A long teakwood counter stretched across the hall, its surface scratched and worn by years of coin trays and elbows. A glass pane rested on top, trapping yellowed notices beneath it – typed, stamped, and curling at the corners like forgotten letters.
Inside the bank, it was cooler than the sun-blanched street outside, though never truly cool – just enough to make you linger. The old air conditioners, probably installed when the building first opened, wheezed and coughed like tired men remembering better days. A long counter stretched across the hall, its surface scratched and worn by years of coin trays and elbows. A glass pane rested on top, trapping yellowed notices beneath it – typed, stamped, and curling at the corners like forgotten letters.
Behind the counter stood a wall of pigeonhole drawers, each one with its own silent story, and above it all came the steady clatter of the NCR machines – faithful, fussy things that seemed to be doing sums with a kind of stubborn pride. Coins clinked gently against marble tops, footsteps whispered across the tiled floor, and somewhere in the back, a sneeze echoed faintly. The tube lights flickered now and then, casting a sleepy yellow haze over everything, as if the room itself existed somewhere between memory and dream.
Behind the counter stood Vasanti. Her shalwar khameez was neatly pressed, her manner composed – the sort of woman who had long grown used to long queues, incomplete forms, and men who struggled to spell their own addresses. She moved with the easy discipline of a schoolteacher.
She turned to the last page of the blue passbook – a thick, dog-eared booklet with a staple mark pulling at the corner and numbers printed like delicate footprints. With a polished fingernail, she tapped the row of figures and asked softly, “What figure do you see here?”
He leaned forward. The digits floated for a moment. There was a flicker of doubt – a familiar feeling, like standing before a blackboard in childhood, reciting multiplication tables with a shaky voice.
“Dirhams four thousand, four hundred and thirty-three… and eighty-nine fils,” he said finally, careful with every syllable.
Vasanti nodded. Not impressed, not indifferent. She adjusted her dupatta over one shoulder and returned to the ledger without a word. It was a routine moment for her. But for him – it was something else entirely. After months of late shifts, cheap food, and letters home folded twice over – this was the first time the balance had seemed substantial. Not large. But enough to make him sit up a little straighter on the hard wooden chair. Enough to feel real.
She explained how the updating worked, her voice low but steady. The bank’s records were kept on thick, dog-eared yellow cards – one for every customer – filed in heavy wooden drawers behind the counter. Whenever a deposit was made, the corresponding card was pulled out, slotted into the clunky NCR machine – a growling beast that rattled like an irritable typewriter – and the transaction amount was keyed in. The machine spat out a response: stamping, printing, hammering digits with the urgency of a newsboy calling out headlines. Sometimes it refused to cooperate. Sometimes it ignored decimal points entirely. But with a little coaxing, and a light tap on its side, it usually came around.
“Like old typewriters,” he said, watching with quiet amusement.
“Worse,” Vasanti replied, without looking up. “These ones have moods.”
The first of every month was the busiest. Payday. From early morning, a line would form outside the bank. Men in uniform overalls, khaki trousers, rolled-up sleeves – clerks, drivers, labourers – all with passbooks clutched to their chests. Some held them like sacred objects. Others folded them carefully into shirt pockets, the corners peeking out like little green or blue bookmarks of toil.
To an outsider, it might have seemed ordinary – even dull. But to those in that queue, it was evidence. Evidence that they were here, they had worked, they had earned something. Something that could be sent back – to put a roof over a home, to keep a child in school, to stitch a wedding dress, to get married or to marry off a sister.
Some men noted each balance in separate notebooks, using stubby pencils sharpened with blades. Others just glanced at the figure and smiled, as though silently thanking the dirham itself. One elderly man kissed his passbook before slipping it into his pocket – a simple gesture, unspoken and profound.
After his transactions, he often lingered a little. Not out of doubt. Out of habit. There was something grounding about the place – about its fluorescent flicker, the persistent clatter of the NCR machine, the thick rubber stamp thudding against paper. Outside, the city surged forward in sand and scaffolding. But inside the bank, time moved at a slower, steadier pace.
That little blue passbook didn’t promise prosperity. But it whispered of progress. It didn’t carry dreams. It recorded the steps taken toward them. Outside, the sun climbed steadily, baking the sidewalk. The calls of “Deira! Deira akhri seat!” began to echo from the line of taxis by the entrance. But within the bank, in the cool, humming silence, something almost sacred lingered. And in that moment – surrounded by ledgers and lives, by noise and numbers – he felt, not rich, but rooted. As if something, at last, had taken hold.
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