Everyone absolutely
insisted that I should get myself a mobile phone. Some were simply incredulous - “What? No
cell phone yet!” they exclaimed. The expression in their eyes revealed -
sympathy and surprise. Sympathy - for not-so-old-a-person gone nuts! And
surprise - at meeting someone from an alien world. Even service providers on the internet
insist on a mobile phone number to register and log on. What cheek!
My recent stint in
the Sundarbans changed all that. Shohini, our daughter gave me her old mobile
phone so that I could keep in touch from that God forsaken place.
Actually, I do come
from a time when a phone was not a gizmo that enhanced one’s status, a hi-fi
music system and a good turntable was (a turntable is a record player). I did
business as a designer without a phone. I employed messengers. Calcutta
Telephone’s loss contributed towards generating employment in the private
sector - and was far more efficient, which in fact I found out much later when
I got my first phone connection. The stupid contraption sat there most of the
time: DEAD!
 |
| RIP |
The first phone
that I ever saw and remember was when I was about 4 years old and was living in
a joint family on Lake Road (miraculously that house still stands). This phone
was a black heavy thing with no dial! You had to pick up the phone and tap the
cradle a few times – almost like knocking on one’s door to attract attention.
That was actually what the tapping was meant for. So a lady at the other end
would respond, “Operator speaking. May I help you?” or at least that is what
they were trained to say. The usual response would be a tired, “Hna number
bolun” (yes, tell me the number). So you told her the number you wanted and she
would connect you and order, “Neen, kotha bolun” (now speak here).
As I traveled a lot
as a designer, in what I look back as my “salad days”- I had to keep in touch
with Smriti. She would reach a friend’s house and wait for my call! I would ask
the operator at the other end to book me a “fixed time call!” There were many
instances that this connection never came about. The lines were either too busy
or the operator must have goofed up. Sometimes when we did get connected and
had just started to talk, a third voice would butt in and generally try to
annoy us. This phenomenon was known as “cross-connection!”
At that time it
was: Public Sector Monopolies Zindabad!
However, phones
then were not intelligent. They had no knack for numbers unlike phones of
today. The telephone company provided a voluminous tome called the “Calcutta
Telephone Directory.” It was held in high regard by some and in their homes
this book adequately made up for the lack of any other book. There were other
uses for it too - it was very handy as a door stopper.
The Calcutta
Telephone Directory was supposed to be updated annually, but that hardly ever
happened. This created a lot of confusion as the company kept on bifurcating
and re-bifurcating its’ local exchanges resulting in frequently changing phone
numbers. This volume served every purpose other than finding a phone number.
Even if you were lucky to find a name the number was wrong and vice versa. So,
private hand written indexes had to be maintained. One had to jot down phone
numbers in a little book called the “telephone diary.” I have one too many. I
am sure many of you still do. Browsing through one of them I realized how much
it concealed within its slim contours - and what they revealed were just not names
and numbers!
Whoever invented
the phone diary must have been a genius!
Just the other day,
I was exchanging phone numbers with someone and realized that the cell phone
memory would treat this entry as any other and dutifully arrange it
alphabetically. I told this person that I still go home and write down a new
number in my little telephone diary. The
person looked surprised. I said that I don’t have to worry about lost phone
numbers when you lose a cell phone. I don’t have to email people with request
to SMS me their numbers to my new phone or send out messages to every one on
Facebook. Apart from that every entry has a story to tell! The puzzled
expression on that persons face read like “man, you are daft!”
 |
| It was a seven digit number and read the notification! |
My first telephone
index was begun around 1988. We had just moved into 135 Sarat Bose Road Lansdowne Road
We wanted an old
phone with a dial, but those had just gone out of fashion. So, the one in vogue
– a touch button design, came home. It was called “Priyadarshini” – named after
Indira Gandhi, obviously by eager to please bureaucrats. This telephone however
fell much short of her good looks and was definitely one of the ugliest
contraptions ever designed.
 |
| Priyadarshini |
I did not maintain
multiple phone diaries all at the same time. A second and a third and a fourth
was necessitated as the S pages got filled up first. I never imagined that I
knew so many people whose names started with S. Soon after that, the A page
filled up too and then the P and R pages.
There was one name
each in Y and Z. There were none in F, Q, W and X! I never knew Wasim Akram or
Kapoor personally! The lone entries in Y and Z were Yasin Khan and Z.A.
Mallick. Both Islamic names and if I had known Wasim it would have been a trio
of Islamic names. It would have been great if I knew people with names like
Faroukh and Qureshi, my phone diary would not have had redundant pages. I can
imagine that Wasim or Akram or Zulfikar or Qureshi would have started a second
diary when their W, Y and Z pages filled up.
Do you know of
anyone whose name starts with X? Other than “Xerxes the Great” I knew a senior
student in the Government Art College
in Calcutta
To be continued...
To be continued...
