Lost and found!!!

I misplaced my wallet last fortnight.. and faced with the fact that it has been persistently missing since then, I have finally deigned to accept that it is actually lost for good. Now, being the extremely closeknit and warm family that we are, we make light of incidents of even this magnitude and stand by the victim in rain as in sun. Like here, I am not sure of how mundane families react to such situations but we definitely wasted no time mourning the loss, being overly busy in fighting and bickering. The husband proudly recounted all the debit/credit cards, cell phones and other such trivia that I have lost till now, so many times, and each time before a new set of people, that I have lost count. I obviously took it in the right spirit, and fought back with zest.. It began with name-calling and innocent blame-gaming but went on to become a full fledged war. Both of us tried to prove that the spouse had lost more stuff than self, and skeletons tumbled out of closets. In hindsight, the debate did serve an important purpose.. we both now have sufficient insight to prevent us from questioning our not-so-great financial state.

The wallet was not the only thing missing. While looking for the wallet, we realised that my passport and pan card were also missing. This made me as good as a newborn, actually worse, since I don't even have a birth certificate and more importantly, the flawless baby skin. I had no identity proof left on me, no credit/debit cards and no cash. Thankfully my Driving license was due to be issued the following week! I started with getting the bank cards blocked. Anybody who has an experience of banking over phone would vouch for the royal pain that it is. The 'customer care'-- all it cares to do is frustrate the customer to the hilt, till the poor man pulls his hair off his already troubled head. They usually begin with asking for the credit/debit card number to be blocked. Now, in my humble opinion, whoever is meticulous and careful enough to note down his card numbers and keep them safe for contingency, would be the last person to misplace them or his wallet as a package. If somehow you manage to get that right, they test your patience by asking endless personal details, like your date of birth, mother's maiden name, billing address and so on. I usually am able to answer most of these satisfactorily, except for the addresses.. what with having switched 4 jobs and 5 houses in the last 6 years, which provide me with 20 'workplace+house address' combinations to try on the telecaller. I ususally take 4-6 tries to scrape through. And then comes the showstopper-the last 3 transactions, which I cannot remember to save my life. Moreover, these cannot be approximate. The amount has to be accurately stated to the second decimal place, along with the exact date of transaction. Getting the cards blocked is no mean feat, sometimes you can spend the entire day on the phone and still not manage to get 5 odd cards done away with. However, this time, it turned out to be different. I accomplished this seemingly impossible task in less than hour. Thanks to Yodlee MoneyCenter! Yes, I work for Yodlee Infotech, and that is the whole reason why I ever added my accounts to the aggregator. Disclaimer: I don't work for the sales team and I do not get a promotion for promoting the product. It helped me during a real crisis, and I am acknowledging that.. plain and simple. I got all my card details from the MoneyCenter, and I literally floored the telecaller with my quick and accurate replies :-) And yes, stunned the husband the same evening, by recovering the passport and pan card, hold your breath, from the dear man's own and super-personal drawer. Ahh.. the sweet taste of revenge ;-)