Three days after the Centre’s move to demonetise high-denomination currency notes, I was in a small town in Kerala en route to my parents’ home.
I was looking to buy myself some lunch, but was having no luck. The cashier at every restaurant I’d walk into would ask to see the newly-minted ₹2,000 note I was carrying. I’d show it to them, let them gawk at it, turn it around, hold it up against the light, chat them up about the colour and features.
But at all three restaurants, the cashiers returned the note to me. The new notes hadn’t trickled down to their town yet, but they knew that their ₹100 notes were at a premium relative to these flashy ₹2,000s.
Point-of-sale credit card terminals aren’t common in those parts either. At the fourth highway eatery I tried, the little machine was dug out from a cupboard and dusted, and its working conditin verified, before I even looked at the menu.
That’s a big change from Mumbai, where I was travelling from, and where you can swipe your card at almost every store.It’s easier living with the demonetisation move when you’re in a big city, but a thousand miles away from urban centres, your plastic money is frustratingly useless.
I was also, to those restaurant cashiers, just a passing traveller, and didn’t qualify for credit. I couldn’t promise to pay them for the meal on my way back to the airport, four days later.
That, too, is unlike my neighbourhood in Mumbai, where credit lines were more easily extended. The salon where I’m a regular, for instance, agreed to thread my eyebrows on credit before I went on my trip. Strikingly, they preferred to give me credit rather than swipe a card for a transaction under ₹500.
Except for the briefly challenging experience of missing lunch one day, living with barely any cash in my purse hasn’t been very difficult. But there’s a downside to living on credit cards. Paying for things in cash induces a bit of caution about how much you’re spending; it’s a lot more difficult to rein in expenses when you’re merrily swiping a card.
I’ve racked up quite a bill this month on Ola and Uber cab rides, but then I didn’t have the cash to pay for cheaper auto rickshaws. Also, grocery, especially fresh fruits and vegetables, is more expensive online as opposed to buying it from pushcart vendors.
I expect it’s going to be trickier by the end of this month, when I’ll have to pay my monthly bills, like the househelp’s salary or the newspaper delivery boy. I’m using the time till then to convince them to take cheques, but they aren’t too happy about it.
And for emergencies, I’ve created a secret stash of ₹100 notes in the past week. Highway restaurant cashiers may not have taken pity on me, but you know who did? Dad, that’s who.