In the Mehta household, IPO allotment day is celebrated like a minor festival and mourned like a minor tragedy, depending entirely on the result. This time, five family members had applied for the same issue, which Mr. Mehta described as “a strategy” and Mrs. Mehta described as “using everyone’s PAN card for hope.”
At 10:00 a.m. the website was supposed to show the allotment status. At 10:00 a.m. the website showed a spinning wheel. At 10:04 it showed an error. At 10:07 Mr. Mehta shouted from the hall, “The server is overloaded! Everyone in the country is checking at the same time!”
“Maybe because everyone in the country applied,” said Mrs. Mehta from the kitchen.
By 10:20 the family had gathered around the laptop like it was a small campfire. Their daughter Tanvi, 16, who had opinions about everything, said, “You know it is just a lottery, right? The chance of getting a lot is maybe one in five.”
“Do not say the word lottery,” said Mr. Mehta. “It is a disciplined allocation process.”
“Is it?”
“It is a lottery,” said Mr. Mehta quietly, “but a disciplined one.”
At 10:31 the page finally loaded. Mr. Mehta typed his PAN with the concentration of a surgeon and pressed Submit. The screen said: Not Allotted.
The room did not move. Mr. Mehta recovered first. “That is fine. That is expected. I did not want it that much.”
Then it was Mrs. Mehta’s turn. Not Allotted. Then Tanvi’s grandmother’s PAN, which had been used “because she is lucky.” Not Allotted. Then the cousin’s, then the neighbour’s who had borrowed the family’s optimism for the day. All Not Allotted.
Five applications. Five rejections. A perfect record, and not in a good way.
It was Tanvi who spotted something on the screen. “Papa, you never checked the other one.”
“What other one?”
“You applied from Mummy’s account too, remember? Under her mother’s PAN.”
Mr. Mehta typed it in slowly. The page loaded. A green line appeared. Allotted: 1 lot.
For a full second, nobody breathed. Then the house erupted. Mr. Mehta threw his arms in the air, Mrs. Mehta cried, and the grandmother, who had just been declared unlucky, said calmly, “Of course. It was my PAN.”
On listing day the stock opened at a two per cent premium. The family sold immediately and went out to celebrate. The dinner cost more than the profit, but no one mentioned it. Some victories are best left unaudited.