I wrote this on my FB page on November 18th, 2016.

Ashok Chickwala's story. Ashok is a chick maker ( chicks are curtain woven with the combination of cloth and small wood pieces or bamboo sticks used as curtains hung on outer surfaces of the house) this is a special craftsmanship but they earn very low amount their average monthly income would be less than Rs 10000 for a 14-16 hour day most of which goes in hunting for work. Ashok is a pleasant guy but can not read or write beyond the numbers he uses for taking measurement of curtains. With the technology invention his life became a bit simpler when he got his first cellphone some six years back. Now his satisfied customers don't have to wait for him to come to their door steps rather they call him on his phone. Most of his business happens through word of mouth so now almost all his business runs through this and rarely a customer walks into his pavement "thiya" where he waits for customer calls. Over the time his business expanded and now he goes to far off places like greater Noida etc because his neighbourhood customers shifted there.

Recently he also purchased a moped to use his time more efficiently. All this must have increased his monthly income now to may be Rs 15000.

Ashok has a bank account and had some savings for moving into a bigger "house" from his one room set-up. So when the money he was "hoarding" became illegal he decided to deposit the same into his bank account. He had heard about long queues so he decided to reach bank at 4.00am and after loitering for half an hour decided to return as looking at the queue he realised he won't possibly get his chance till evening. So next day he decided to reach the bank at 3.00am but then queue was even longer so returned after a while. On the third day he reached there close to midnight at 1.00am and saw some 40-50 people so decided to stand in the queue. He noticed that closer to the bank opening time 9.00am the people in front multiplied 3 to 4 times and people who were originally in the queue gave way for others ( they took some Rs 100.00 for standing in the queue for them. There were also some who were depositing for others for a small fee, of course.Then the guy who came there in the queue "inserted" three or four of his friends/family and that was the reason for the queue expansion. People behind did not resist or may be could not. Finally after stopping all his physical "needs" for over 13 hours he was lucky to find himself inside the bank at 2.00pm and was out an hour later. The bank staff was quite cooperative, he said.

Ashok was feeling so lucky with his "achievement"that he never felt the need to crib, although he lost his day's wage and the other two days just managed half day of work.

This was Ashok's" contribution" to unearth black money in the country.

PS: Ashok, besides helping us with chicks is also a friend who often comes over for a cup of tea. He has lots of interesting stories from back home a village near Agra as well as related to his work, that he shares. The demonetisation story was told this afternoon when he came for a small job.