Joint controls

So with all the logistical changes, it has come to be that for the first time, my father and I hold a shared bank account. We have our separate things going on as well, but this joint account is rather interesting. Ma held many bank accounts. All of them were shared jointly with my father. That was among the many things that annoyed her of course.

The thing is, this account was opened where I am based locally. My father lives elsewhere. The manager suggested I be the primary holder of the account, he refused. She said it would make correspondence easier. Nope. She said, it would take a while for them to courier a kit out to him and verify his address. He said, no matter, he was to be the primary account holder.

They asked me if I wanted a debit card, I refused. A cheque book, I refused. Blah. Too many cooks/ I was only a local contact/ etc. What good use is all of this any way, I thunk.

Things turned out rather differently for us since then. It has been over a month and my father has still not received any of the promised items from the bank. A lot of it has to do with his remote location. I have received all of the things that I actually refused. Just like that. All that he gets are sms alerts. Each time, I do something - like paying people who, well, we owe money to or when I got the cheque book, when I increased the transfer limit. And so on.

And it has been driving him up the wall. He calls each time to check if I did indeed do what the sms notified I did. Each time, I confirm, having in truth, done the activity. Each time he says, good, so you can access the account. I still can’t.

Its amazing the number of things that can drive a person crazy, no? He refuses to even move to the city - he was told by his friends that he should be living in with his daughter and not the other way round. Obviously, that too, didn't bode well with him.

This morning, I thought about it and smiled. Somewhere I could feel Ma’s grin too.