MYSORE: In olden days when there were no banks, people used to hide their valuables beneath the ground or search for some other safe places. But in modern times where the banking system has advanced, a banana merchant did something unthinkable to hide his hard earned money to save it from his spendthrift son but ultimately lost it miserably.
Bannegowda of Raghavapura village near Gundlupet, who returned home after a tiring day, went straight to the kitchen and hid a steel box containing a bundle of currency notes worth Rs 25,000 in a firewood stove. Unlike many other days, he had a peaceful sleep on that night, as he thought that the home grown ‘thief’ will not be able to reach out to his small fortune.
Next morning, as usual his dutiful wife brought him the bed tea and after handing it over, asked him to book an LPG refill as the cylinder has exhausted. He had a storm in his cup of tea when she said she had to use firewood to make tea.
Bannegowda, who ran into the kitchen, pulled out the hot embers from the stove with his bare hands, only to find the burnt currency notes in the steel box. He was heart broken. The wife wept for making the ‘costly tea’.
The ‘currency burning’ incident which occurred two weeks ago, spread like a wild fire in the village with friends and relatives mostly women making a beeline to Bannegowda’s house to generously pour sympathies on the family for feeling the heat.