Two Rs 1,000, one Rs 500 and four Rs 10 notes are what Rituraj Sinha has in his wallet on Friday evening. “I am like any other person who has run out of cash,” says Sinha, MD of SIS Prosegur , a cash logistics firm, that services roughly 25,000 ATMs across the country. It has been a harrowing week for Sinha, 37, who is also president of Cash Logistics Association of India. He had just landed from the US around 8 pm on Tuesday when he got to know about the demonetisation drive. “Forget prior information. Nobody had even a whiff of it.”As all hell broke loose, Sinha was on the job in quick time, for what was at stake was “national interest”. A video conference was called with key members of the team across the country. By the time it got over at 11 pm, the core team had assembled at the corporate headquarters in Delhi for an emergency meeting, which lasted till 2 am. The message to the team was an unambiguous oneliner: since the move was unprecedented, the reaction too had to be extraordinary.Leaves were cancelled and extra resources were mobilised on a war footing. Over 25 additional cash vans, 35 more security guards (in addition to 550) and an equal number of trainees were brought to the headquarters on Wednesday morning.The first urgent need was to clear ATMs of the old currencies and bring them to the headquarters. The task was daunting because in the first week of November, SIS had loaded over 2,450 ATMs in Delhi-NCR with cash.Once the money was evacuated, the next job was to fill ATMs with new denominations. The step sounded simple, but it was not. Reason: Only Rs 100 notes were initially issued by the banks. Sinha knew they would not suffice. Reason: every ATM has four money cassettes or slots, two for Rs 500, one for Rs 1,000 notes and one for Rs 100 notes. Each cassette can hold up to 3,000 notes, which means over Rs 2.5 lakh in Rs 100 notes in a single ATM. Forget a big city like Delhi, that amount is paltry even for a tier-II town. No wonder, ATMs are running out of cash within a few hours.Meanwhile Sinha, busy supervising operations at the cash processing unit, is trying his best to replenish ATMs as soon as possible. “It’s a physical exercise. So it can’t happen in a flash.”Note, the Problem Indeed, technology can’t speed up the process. By the time a cash van loads an ATM and moves to another location, the first ATM is pretty much empty. What has also aggravated the problem is the nonavailability of Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 notes. And it will take some more time before users can withdraw the new currency because the ATM machine cassettes are yet to be configured for the new notes (which are of a different size). “People in my office too are having sleepless nights,” shrugs Sinha.Dileep Singh is one such employee who has slept for just eight hours over the last three days. The vault manager at SIS Prosegur has been frantically working with his colleagues to ensure that the soiled and torn currencies removed from ATMs are fixed, counted and then stocked in huge trunks and sent to the banks. What makes his job all the more tiring is that he has to keep track of the new notes coming from the banks and direct them to the refilling team.A makeshift tent has been erected on the roof of the four-storey building where the workers take a nap for a few hours, snack together and then get back to work. “It’s exhausting but equally satisfying that we are able to help people meet the emergency situation,” says Sinha. He may be doing his bit but that clearly isn’t proving to be enough in the early days post demonetisation.