Recently
my friend Ruma Chakraborty posted the following on Facebook:
Illicit
and Other Stories
“When
I heard a friend had tried to call me twice and I had missed them...for a
minute or ten I longed for the phones of the past…the kind that had no mute
buttons but rang till your head ached and you picked up....the kind in the
photo below! New Zealand Telecom recycles well!”
 |
| New Zealand Telecom SHEEP - TELEPHONES ART |
Needless
to say it got 45 likes, 2 shares 9 comments and I decided to include it in this
blog. It made me wonder whether Calcutta Telephones or BSNL would have tons of
old telephones locked away somewhere and whether they would commission an
artist to do something with them. I suppose not – too much paper work to
dispose off junk and this perhaps explains their huge properties! Who knows what they conceal behind those
walls…
Recently,
a new found friend from abroad was coming to stay with us in Kolkata. He was
coming from Varanasi. However much I tried to communicate with him, his brand
new Indian cell phone did not work. So, urgent messages had to depend on
nightly emails. When he missed his train due to the vagaries of the ticketing
system of the Indian Railways and I waited at Howrah station for a train that
was two hours late, there was no way to get in touch with him. I returned home
to send frantic emails. Then I realized that to make matters worse I had not
read the amended date carefully enough. Finally,
he did board a train the next day and arrived at my door step – smiling
victoriously.
After
breakfast and over a cup of black Coorg coffee I asked him,”So Steven, what’s
the matter with your cell phone connection?”
“I
bought this phone and sim card in Mumbai and gave all the documents they needed
and yet the phone did not get activated. I tried to get it done from the next
city I visited and they took all my papers once again and yet the damn thing
did not work! Now I am on the last leg of my India sojourn and I will go back
with so much credit on the phone which will be worthless elsewhere”, he
explained.
“Why
did you not call me from a public telephone booth? There are hundreds of them
everywhere!” I asked.
“Telephone
booths?” he asked.
“Did
you not notice the STD booths…”I trailed off, immediately knowing what had gone
wrong and I had that which you call a ROFL moment. After my belly ache had
subsided I said, “Steven! STD is Subscriber Trunk Dial…not Sexually Transmitted
Diseases. What did you take us for - a nation of promiscuous men?” This time we
both laughed while trying not to spill our coffee. Steven left India with a dud
cell phone as a memento and the knowledge that STD means much more than
Sexually Transmitted Diseases.
Why
on earth did the Telecom department think of a name like that? Wouldn't National Network Telephones (NNT) worked as well? And International Network
Telephone (INT)? Better still could one not simply write “TELEPHONE BOOTH”? There
is an obvious disconnect here – the usual mindless public sector mandarins and
there archaic mindsets bent on complicating things. Signage in India has a long
way to go.
My
E page has just two entries – just the same two names brought forward in all of
them. Eureka Forbes Service Centre that services our drinking water filter and
not something to write about. The other entry is my good friend Eugene Datta. I
have many stories to tell about him, but, Eugene is a very close friend and I
respect his privacy. So, after much consideration and a conversation with him I
have permission to divulge just one anecdote.
Eugene
is much younger than us – that is, Smriti and me. She met him during a trip to
Bhutan about 28 years ago and that started an inseparable friendship between
us. We have been privy to Eugene’s “evolution” as a young man and as an author.
He did not like his job as a sub-editor in a newspaper and yearned to be a
full-time writer. His trials and tribulations throughout have been many and
eventful. One such event was his being invited to a writer’s residency in
Switzerland for a whole year that was also extended for another six months! For
a struggling creative person with stretched resources, I know what that
entails. Clothes, warm clothes, coats and jackets, a sensible pair of shoes, an
assortment of personal belongings and a bag to fit all of it in. The laptop
needed servicing – a bag for that too. The list is long. His already stretched
resources were now beyond stretching anymore. But, Eugene somehow managed to
get everything together, thanks to some amount of judicious cutting corners.
One
such item of purchase was a pair of sneakers that was not too informal – a wear-
them-with-everything kind of pair. For this he searched the small stalls of
Metro Galli. For those who have not been there, here’s a description of this
alley crowded with stalls and shops.
The
alley derives its name from the art deco Metro movie theatre on the main road
and not the Metro Railway. The Metro Channel opposite and at the foot of Mr.
Vladimir Lenin’s statue may have – I am not sure. The alley starts at this
point and ends on that part of Moti Sil Street that has a profusion of shops
selling all kinds of prophylactics - prompting the nickname Rubber Street. In
between there are all kinds of shops selling cameras, clothes, watches, et al. There
are also some that sell glass panes and mirrors. Glass House being the one that
supplied most of my own requirements. As one enters Metro Galli from the
Chowringhee end there are stalls selling shoes on the right. Eugene must have
bought his pair of shoes from one of these stalls here. I too had bought a pair
from there once and they were so stubborn that I had to damage them in order to
justify buying new ones!
 |
| The stubborn pair before they were destroyed |
Anyway,
Eugene finally had his things sorted out and was soon in Switzerland. He spent
a great deal of time writing and pounding the pavements of Basel. The Metro
Galli shoe served him well for a while, but, finally gave way at the most
inopportune moment. In a hurry to get to the opening of a show of his
co-resident, he hurried down the stairs; the sole of one of the shoes came off.
Eugene stumbled, fell down the stairs and broke his right wrist.
You
think that this didn’t augur well? You are wrong…wait till I tell you how life
changing this accident turned out to be.
To
be continued…
Links:
Illicit
and Other Stories
<https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/245706>
New Zealand Telecom SHEEP - TELEPHONES ART
<http://miscellaneous-sonstiges.blogspot.in/2008/07/new-zealand-telecom-sheep-telephones.html>
