The chase

It was a queit evening and the place is the ground floor of one of the twin towers in the town. All of a sudden people from the other tower started running toward the spiral staircase as if there was an evacuation order. They were screaming and going up the stairs, maybe to the top of the building. Soon, I too started climbing the stairs. When I reached the 2nd floor, I realized that my wife and son were also in the same building at that time. I rushed back to the ground floor and spotted them and sent them ahead of me. I stopped a moment, I guess, to find out what was happening. I saw some soldiers (may be the British) outside the window and decided to follow the crowd and rushed back upstairs. But, i was a little late. The stairs led me to open space and everyone disappeared from there. There was an abrupt end of stairs and they are looped in a circular patter at the ends similar to one of those famous illusions. I had nowhere to go. Meanwhile, I could hear the sound of soldier's boots nearing me fast.. They were attacking many civilians who support the Independence movement. Then, I had to quickly find a way to escape from them.. It was already dark and somehow managed to jump off the wall into the woods. There were a lot of trees and small bushes in that place. The moonlight started taking effect. I was running like crazy to find a place to hide. I noticed a few of my colleagues hiding under one tree. I was about join them and observed that a soldier in uniform noticed us. The chase resumed again and everyone was running for their life. I tried to hide again under another bush. You can run but you can't hide, right ?.. got noticed again by another goon. This time decided to go out of the woods back to the residential area.

Suddenly I found myself in front of a police station. The location is pleasant with flower plants on either side of the nicely laid out walk-way in between the slate roofed houses. A moment of silence under the moon light. I could see everything clearly. There he is, a British seargent dressed in some colorful clothing (yellow and red) similar to the MacDonald's guy.. Let's call him Macky. He was playing a guitar and slowly approaching me with a smile on his face as if he trapped me. I quickly turned backwards to find myself infront of another armed officer aiming to shoot me. For a moment, I thought it was the end of my life. I just looked on both sides and realized that three of us were in a straight line. The shot was fired and I managed to throw myself on to the ground.. voila !! and you guessed it right.. the bullet struck Macky with a bang and he is down.. I took the Guitar from the wounded and ran towards the backyard of another house to hide again. Unfortunately, someone from the house spotted me and was inquiring why I was there. He had no idea that I was being chased. Soon, the goons are back again. I could hear them talking to the wounded Macky outside the compound wall. This time I had another look at Macky.. Suddenly he looks like the world's heaviest man with huge limbs. I heard Macky saying " you cheated me ..". I was yelling "You are torrid... torrid..torrid"..
I guess I had enough of the chase... woke up from my sleep to tell you this dream.

ATM Experience

I was just walking down the road and spotted Sumant(a friend mine ) talking to a scooter owner. It was an old navy blue scooter and Sumant was about to purchase it. I guess he bargained it for Rs. 5,000 and finalized the deal. Sumant asked me if I could lend him the money. I happily agreed and went to the ATM and withdrew Rs. 100,000. The machine delivered a tightly packed bundle of 500 notes. The bundle looked brand new and no sign of any fault. I just went back home and opened the bundle to give five thousand rupees to Sumant.
To my shock, I saw only a few legitimate notes and all others were fake notes. They were so fake that the currencies have “Fake Note” printed on them and the color is nowhere close to the legal currency. My blood pressure started increasing and I was kicking myself for the fault.. It just had 10 valid notes... I quickly handed over the valid notes to Sumant and ran over to the bank/ATM to report the issue.

The ATM was located in a mini mall. As soon as I reached the ATM, looked for any suspicious traps in ATM and I could not find any. On my mobile phone I dialed my private banking officer Seema to report the problem.. My heart-rate was high and I was gasping for breath. The voice on the phone replied "Hello Sir, tell me sir" .. I just managed to mumble a few words "Hi Seema, ATM gave me fake notes... " . I could hear Seema telling someone, "hey.. ATM is tampered..call the team". No other questions asked. There was no fuss about why I did not verify the notes at the ATM etc.. Inspite of all the tension, I couldn't help but appreciate the commitment and professionalism that Seema and the bank showed in reacting to the incident. Without asking any more questions she said that she will take care of the problem and advised the security to close all the exit doors of the mall. She asked if I could scan thru the crowd to spot any suspects. I told her that I withdrew the money 2 hours ago. She said that it is okay and asked me to try to get the doors closed. There were lots of people around, I just shouted the words "security, close the door, there is a theif inside..". Finally, all the doors were shut and I started running upstairs to see if I could spot any suspect.. When I reached the 3rd floor, I did spot one middle-aged guy who is not with the rest of the crowd and was looked tentative in his actions. He was wearing a dark purple shirt and a dhoti and did not look like a gentleman.. Within seconds, I could recall that he was there around the ATM when I withdrew the money. Without hesitating much, I shouted, "thief.. thief" . I am not sure if he thought he can not hide anymore, he started running downstairs. I have started chasing him downstairs and at the same time, calling for help from others... Just when he reached the ground floor, a couple of guards knocked him down and we captured him. The banker, Seema also reached there just in time... Upon some search, we could retrieve 4 keys from the thief each of them marked with a unique number. One of the key has a tag which matches with my account id. I did not really understand what these keys are and their relation with fake currency.. I looked as if Seema figured everything out and took me to the ATM to explain.. It was as if the fake currency was planted there before I entered the ATM. What I got was the fake currency and meanwhile, the my ATM pin was captured somehow, and using the pin, the thief made these keys, which he will use later to steal exactly the same amount from the ATM. Though I did not understand much of what she was saying, and how it was possible, I was happy that I was not at loss.

There were a lot of puzzles still unsolved... Why did I want to withdraw 1 lakh whereas I required only 5,000. How can the ATM give 100,000 in one shot? How did the packed bundle come out of ATM machine? When the bundle looked like a genuine one at the ATM, how did I discover so many fake currencies at home?

All the questions were answered in a moment as I said to myself.. "There are no rules in dreams". Have fun !!