Tour de Minto Road.
Disclaimer- to be very honest, my knowledge regarding public ad is too poor to relate the following storie/s with theories or any sections of public ad studies & vis-à-vis I would like to lay my sincere apology to our course teacher for being such a stupid pupil of his. At the same time, I’d like to thank you all from the core of my heart for being so patient, and forbearing me. Now it’s story time.
Roughly a year back, when I used to be stupider than now I am, & constant tide of failure was washing me off this ephemeral earth, I received a text from ‘Banglalink’ that read “Congratulations, you've won a Toyota Premio in ‘never happened’ lottery. Please contact with the no. attached to claim your reward!” in a splendid afternoon which persuaded me to believe all those ‘never happened’ & going to happen deception absolutely losing my mind. When I dialled on the no. that was in the text, I probably found the sweetest voice on earth suggesting me about the miscellaneous costs I had to bear which is 18750/-BDT to own the car. I was pretty much convinced that this Premio was going to appease my well-wishers for the time being since I brought a ton of misery in their life being unable to secure a merit position in JU Admission tests. Or maybe it was that failure what’d driven me desperate from savant & all of a sudden I discovered myself locked in an ‘Omuk telecom’ shop getting roasted by the owner of the shop for 9000 taka which I never had, but just sent from their bkash account along with BDT 10000 from my pocket money funded by my dear daddy as my accommodation & travel allowance for upcoming DU, RU, KU, NU blah blah admission tests. But that hardly mattered since I was in an ecstasy of ‘Premio winner’.
Roughly 5 minutes after the roasting session, I received a phone call from that very sweet-voice phone no. but only this time a very serious middle-aged man asked for more 2000/- taka as the delivery charge which left no doubt that I was just swindled of 19000 taka & yet again 9000 of which I never had! & only God knows how I managed to free myself from that store collecting 9000 taka from my friends & acquaintances by the skin of my teeth!
I was very ignorant about the next step, but someone with such experience prescribed me to see the DB office in Minto road which I did & successfully failed to procure any sort of outcome. They told me to file a GD & then see them back with a copy of GD which is the formal procedure. The next day while I went there again with a copy of GD I was told to wait which was per se one & nearly half Tamil movies long! Finally, when I was allowed to pass the threshold I had the following conversation with an official present there-
— What did you come up with?
Me: (handed over the copy of GD)
— Hmm, right now we're handling near about 50 such cases where the victim’s loss is more than a lakh taka & to procure that money they spent more than your loss.
Me: (totally bewildered by his point)
— Ok, we’ve to track the swindler. The contact no. that you provided will be our lead at this point, we’ll keep you updated. That’s it for now. (‘Have a great day’ maybe if it was a Hollywood movie)
After the incident, I feel like I'm ten years older than I was before. So his “that’s it for now” kind of made me clear that was that for an eternal ‘now’ which is still ongoing. Maybe one day my daughter/son will get an update tended for me & my grandchild will buy 19 chocolates with the procured money I was defrauded of since defrauded money pays no interest!
