Sugata Ghosh, ET Bureau Jan 11, 2014, 03.25AM IST
MUMBAI: The man looks over his glasses with a smile, his well-oiled hair neatly combed. Sitting next to him on the gaddi is his nephew, a portly young man who is sorting out currency notes of various denominations.
As you enter the room, they set aside the wads of notes to greet you. Besides a glass almirah displaying coins and medallions, there are two old-fashioned safes with the customary swastika mark.
With a broad grin, the person in his early fifties points at the Rs 5 note on his desk and says, "Take a look... Do you find anything interesting?" The typical reaction may be to cross-check the watermark, security thread and other features that distinguish a real from a counterfeit.
You are missing out on something he's trying to draw your attention to: it's the six-digit number next to the alphanumeric printed on the top right and bottom left. It reads: 160868. Does it ring a bell? No, you give up. "It's August 16, 1968, Arvind Kejriwal's birthday," he smiles again.
STRANGE BUSINESS
Is it a one-off ? He shakes his head and fishes out a tenner with the identical six digits. It's now the turn of the nephew.
He carefully opens a plastic folder with several notes of different values placed one after another. He picks the one with the number 021165. It makes little sense unless you are a Shah Rukh Khan fan, for whom the bill may be a collector's item with the star's birthday — November 2, 1965 — printed on it.
How do they get such bank notes? "Dhyaan rakhna padta hai...tarah tarah ke din dimaag mein rakhne padte hain," says Prakash Jain, the proprietor of the 96-year-old firm that has been a moneychanger, earning a nominal commission by supplying crisp currency notes in exchange for torn, soiled notes to merchants of Masjid Bunder, temple trusts, high-street banks and even government transport agencies.
"We no longer deal with temples," says Lalit Jain, the 29-year-old nephew. The window overlooks the road leading to the Mumba Devi temple and the congested bylanes of Zaveri Bazaar, the country's bullion hub.
Up a narrow, winding staircase, on the second floor of one of the many nondescript buildings that line the road, housing several jewellers, the Jains carry out their unusual business along with the age-old note-exchange trade.
Quick to segregate interesting numbers
Every morning, their boys along with other money-changers queue up at the Reserve Bank of India office to collect new notes in exchange for old ones of the same value.
It's a service the central bank offers, with amounts above a certain value being credited to the money-changers' bank accounts.
Jains can't choose the bills they collect from RBI, which releases new notes according to different series and serial numbers. But they are quick to segregate the ones that can be useful to them.
For instance, they have little interest in notes where the six-digit number begins with 32 or more.
OF FAITH, PASSION & FANS
But dates aren't the only thing on their mind as they check out the numbers. Lalit pulls out another folder of Rs 10 notes.
The first bill bears the number 000786, the numeric value of Quran's opening phrase, "In the name of Allah, the compassionate, the merciful..." The next note has the number 001786, followed by 002786 with the last note in the folder having the digits 999786.
"It's not just Muslims, many Hindus too come for such notes," says Prakash. "We can't sell them like antiques, but it's difficult to put a price on these...People gift them as well as take them for personal collection.
Notes can last a lifetime," adds Lalit, underscoring the importance of the bills without getting into the premium they fetch. Understandably, it could all boil down to the buyer, his faith, belief and passions.
A string of notes with the number 000024 can signify 'Mahavir' — the 24th and the last Tirthankar. A person of the same faith could also be drawn to a number like 000108, that could remind her of the 108 names of Parshvanath Bhagavan.
It's a curious trade where Jains try to make coincidences happen. There's always that element of luck of the draw, having to wait for months trying to complete a chain; for instance, the Rs 500 note may be missing in the chain of notes of all denominations of Rs 5 to Rs 1,000 with an identical number.
They often ask regular customers to fetch such a note if they come across one in the course of their daily transactions; at times they are lucky.
Some numbers look different. Post 2006, RBI adopted the 'Star series' numbering system for replacement of defectively printed banknotes. These are exactly the same as existing 'Mahatma Gandhi series' notes, but have '*' (a star) between the prefix and the number.
CHANGING TIMES
The family shuns marketing and advertisements, relying more on word-of-mouth publicity. Almost a decade ago, the idea struck Prakash Jain as he sorted currency bills on a regular business day.
Source
MUMBAI: The man looks over his glasses with a smile, his well-oiled hair neatly combed. Sitting next to him on the gaddi is his nephew, a portly young man who is sorting out currency notes of various denominations.
As you enter the room, they set aside the wads of notes to greet you. Besides a glass almirah displaying coins and medallions, there are two old-fashioned safes with the customary swastika mark.
With a broad grin, the person in his early fifties points at the Rs 5 note on his desk and says, "Take a look... Do you find anything interesting?" The typical reaction may be to cross-check the watermark, security thread and other features that distinguish a real from a counterfeit.
You are missing out on something he's trying to draw your attention to: it's the six-digit number next to the alphanumeric printed on the top right and bottom left. It reads: 160868. Does it ring a bell? No, you give up. "It's August 16, 1968, Arvind Kejriwal's birthday," he smiles again.
STRANGE BUSINESS
Is it a one-off ? He shakes his head and fishes out a tenner with the identical six digits. It's now the turn of the nephew.
He carefully opens a plastic folder with several notes of different values placed one after another. He picks the one with the number 021165. It makes little sense unless you are a Shah Rukh Khan fan, for whom the bill may be a collector's item with the star's birthday — November 2, 1965 — printed on it.
How do they get such bank notes? "Dhyaan rakhna padta hai...tarah tarah ke din dimaag mein rakhne padte hain," says Prakash Jain, the proprietor of the 96-year-old firm that has been a moneychanger, earning a nominal commission by supplying crisp currency notes in exchange for torn, soiled notes to merchants of Masjid Bunder, temple trusts, high-street banks and even government transport agencies.
"We no longer deal with temples," says Lalit Jain, the 29-year-old nephew. The window overlooks the road leading to the Mumba Devi temple and the congested bylanes of Zaveri Bazaar, the country's bullion hub.
Up a narrow, winding staircase, on the second floor of one of the many nondescript buildings that line the road, housing several jewellers, the Jains carry out their unusual business along with the age-old note-exchange trade.
Quick to segregate interesting numbers
Every morning, their boys along with other money-changers queue up at the Reserve Bank of India office to collect new notes in exchange for old ones of the same value.
It's a service the central bank offers, with amounts above a certain value being credited to the money-changers' bank accounts.
Jains can't choose the bills they collect from RBI, which releases new notes according to different series and serial numbers. But they are quick to segregate the ones that can be useful to them.
For instance, they have little interest in notes where the six-digit number begins with 32 or more.
OF FAITH, PASSION & FANS
But dates aren't the only thing on their mind as they check out the numbers. Lalit pulls out another folder of Rs 10 notes.
The first bill bears the number 000786, the numeric value of Quran's opening phrase, "In the name of Allah, the compassionate, the merciful..." The next note has the number 001786, followed by 002786 with the last note in the folder having the digits 999786.
"It's not just Muslims, many Hindus too come for such notes," says Prakash. "We can't sell them like antiques, but it's difficult to put a price on these...People gift them as well as take them for personal collection.
Notes can last a lifetime," adds Lalit, underscoring the importance of the bills without getting into the premium they fetch. Understandably, it could all boil down to the buyer, his faith, belief and passions.
A string of notes with the number 000024 can signify 'Mahavir' — the 24th and the last Tirthankar. A person of the same faith could also be drawn to a number like 000108, that could remind her of the 108 names of Parshvanath Bhagavan.
It's a curious trade where Jains try to make coincidences happen. There's always that element of luck of the draw, having to wait for months trying to complete a chain; for instance, the Rs 500 note may be missing in the chain of notes of all denominations of Rs 5 to Rs 1,000 with an identical number.
They often ask regular customers to fetch such a note if they come across one in the course of their daily transactions; at times they are lucky.
Some numbers look different. Post 2006, RBI adopted the 'Star series' numbering system for replacement of defectively printed banknotes. These are exactly the same as existing 'Mahatma Gandhi series' notes, but have '*' (a star) between the prefix and the number.
CHANGING TIMES
The family shuns marketing and advertisements, relying more on word-of-mouth publicity. Almost a decade ago, the idea struck Prakash Jain as he sorted currency bills on a regular business day.
Source
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