Forty-one-year-old Meenakshi, a domestic help who lives in Hassan, is among the many to whom demonetisation dealt a deadly financial blow. The impact was particularly severe in her case because, as a hearing and speech impaired person, she was not even aware of demonetisation until it was too late.
As a result, she could not exchange her life’s savings of ₹1.39 lakh, which she had put together in cash over 15 years in the hope of owning a small house. But one fine day she woke up to the reality that the currency notes in which she held her savings were absolutely worthless.
She struggled for an entire year, with help from her family members, to persuade bank officials to treat her as a special case and allow her to exchange money beyond the official deadline. Unable to convince them, Ms. Meenakshi recently dumped all the cash into the Hemavati river flowing through the town. The family took the step after their neighbours warned them that possessing old currency notes was an offence.
Now help has come her way from an unexpected quarter: a total stranger. A. Ramakrishnan, a reader of the The Hindu and a Bengaluru resident, was so moved by the story on her published on September 3 in the newspaper that he decided to help Ms. Meenakshi.
Mr. Ramakrishnan, a software engineer, has transferred ₹25,000 to Ms Meenakshi’s savings account. He told The Hindu that he was familiar with many such tragedies in his home town of Madurai, where, too, people had lost their life’s savings following demonetisation. He said he would continue to transfer ₹5,000 a month to Ms. Meenakshi’s account for the next three months as well.
Ms. Meenakshi’s mother Lakshmidevi and brother Nagaraj spoke to Mr. Ramakrishnan over phone and thanked him. They said that the money meant a great deal, as Ms. Meenakshi earned about ₹1,500 a month and gets ₹1,200 a month as disability pension. Mr. Nagaraj said: “We could not convince the bank and government officers to help us, but we are happy that her plight has moved someone who does not even know our family.”
