Telephone Call

The Telephone call

It was half past 10 at night and one could see the

sodium vapor street lights glowing in the dark

through the window. The branches of mango tree , ju

st outside the window were standstill as if they

were commanded to ‘Savadhan’ by the captain, remini

scent of the marchpast conducted in the school.

It was an unavoidable dilemma for Rajiv whether to

open the window to get some wasp of fresh air or

to confine himself with the silent surroundings, in

order to listen to the weekly ‘ Tuesday’ ordeal o

f

listening to his US boss and fellow colleagues thro

ugh the rambling speakerphone, which he had made

it a habit to put on ‘mute’, when the discussion in

the conference call was getting predicted in his

mind. However, he still needed to mark his presence

by his occasional remarks towards the ongoing

discussion. Today, he possibly did not even need to

do that given the fact that US boss was going to

present his strategy. The fading sound of the speak

erphone and occasional sound of the vehicles on

the road were appearing to be a recipe of a differe

nt kind and were playing a jugalbandi in his mind.

It was exam season and the annual exams were going

to start in the next 3 days. It was study holidays

for the next 3 days before Rajiv would be sitting i

n one of the classrooms to write his annual exams t

hat

coincided with the mango season. But for the exams,

Rajiv would be, otherwise, doing an audit of the

mango trees surrounding his house to look for sligh

tly bigger, raw but tingling mangoes that he and hi

s

friends could eat along with salt and chilly powder

. He wanted to be more careful this time since last

year he had got sick during the exam times because

of consuming excess citric acid in the form of raw

mangoes. However, he could still not leave aside th

e temptation of atleast hurling a few stones on tho

se

green mangoes, hiding behind the greener leaves. It

was the act of hitting the mango and catching the

same before it hit the ground that gave him the ple

asure.

Rajiv was desperately trying to focus his attention

on the upcoming science exam for which the portion

s

were not entirely completed this year due to a long

leave of the science teacher. There was also some

confusion towards the exam syllabus amongst his fri

ends. This confusion was bothering him for the pas

t

one hour and he desperately needed to talk to Arun

who used to live 6 kilometers away from his home.

While he could also meet his other friends , who us

ed to live nearby, to clear the confusion, but he w

as

not sure if the other friends could clarify. It w

as Arun, whom he wanted to talk desperately! With t

he

corner of eyes, he started to look at his black bic

ycle, which was his trusted partner in his off-home

activities. He had gone once on his bicycle to Nil

ji, the place where Arun lived in the posh quarters

,

which was surrounded by the tall and secure compoun

d that encompassed the whole area. He had

traversed on the highway on his bicycle , slightly

nervous but confident of the journey. However, he h

ad

gone along with couple of his other friends who had

accompanied him and his nervousness had turned

into cheerfulness after some time. This time, he wo

uld have to ride alone and was also not sure if his

parents would allow him to do so. Rajiv was getting

nervous and the sight of the large science book ly

ing

on the table made him more uncomfortable. He had to

pped the class in science in the half-yearly exam

and he wanted to repeat the same in the final yearl

y exams too. However, the clarity towards the

syllabus was bothering him now. If it was not for

the Saturday cricket match, he would have talked to

Arun and got the clarification but he had missed th

at opportunity and now he had to find a solution fa

st.

He quickly glanced at the wall clock and it was nea

ring noon and the little streaks of sweat on his

forehead gave an indication of the weather outside.

His only hope of undertaking a bicycle ride was

vanishing fast. He took the cork ball lying on the

bed and started playing mindlessly with it as if t

he cork

ball would turn into a crystal ball that could offe

r him magical solutions. The science book, was stil

l

gazing back at Arun and beckoning him to turn its p

ages. Rajiv drudgingly nudged himself from his bed

to move towards his study table and sat on the croa

king chair that seem to make noise only during the

exam season. He hesitantly started to flip the pag

es and started to mark the chapters he had to revis

e.

While turning one of the pages, his eyes gazed on t

he center of the page that was the beginning of a

new chapter - ‘MODE OF COMMUNICATION’. Rajiv was ve

ry comfortable with this chapter and had even

scored 24/25 in the unit tests couple of months bac

k. His eyes were now focused on the center of the

page on a little picture of dark black object with

a circular dial and a bone shaped attachment with i

t.

The dial was embedded with luminous decimal numeral

s within itself. His mind was starting to ease out

and was filling with joy as he started to recollect

the conversation that he had with Arun few months

back on their way back from the school. He vividly

recollected the conversation that afternoon when

Arun had given his intercom number to reach out to

him in case of emergency. He had wondered when

would he possibly use the ‘number’ and neither had

he done such a thing earlier. He suddenly

scrambled across the book shelf to look for the sch

ool diary in which he had noted down the ‘number’

on the last page. The diary had gone into hibernati

on in the last few weeks and was almost at the

bottom of the stack of books. He quickly, carefully

fetched the diary and turned to the last page to l

ook

for the ‘number’ he had jotted down hurriedly by a

camlin HB pencil. He jumped with joy at the sight o

f

the faint number with three digits - 139 at the lef

t corner of the last page. His mind now raced back

to

the conversation on that sultry afternoon after the

drawing class. Arun had also instructed him to rea

ch

out to the nearest telephone booth within the campu

s and call from there in order to talk to him. Raji

v

was not even sure if he remembered everything that

Arun had carefully told that day since cricket

discussion with Sanjay had taken a higher priority

and he had actually jotted down the number in the

diary so that Arun was not displeased. Though this

appeared to be the solution that he was looking for

,

he was still jittery and nervous considering that h

e had never done a ‘telephone call’ through the dar

k

black little object that was called the telephone.

Apart from that, he was also not sure of where he c

ould

find one in order to make use of this new ‘mode of

communication’. He wished that the teachers in

school also had shown the class how to use the same

in one of the science laboratories or the music

room so that it would have made his life easier tod

ay. That exercise would have been much more

fruitful than the pendulum experiments or the harmo

nium demonstration, which in his mind, did not

serve any purpose. However, it was also probably no

t possible because the entire school only had one

telephone in the principal’s chamber and the princi

pal was a strict, no-nonsense person who would not

have allowed anyone to even enter his chamber leave

aside someone using his telephone for the

demonstration. These thoughts and the anxious momen

ts in the last few minutes had already reduced

his finger nails and the trickle of sweat had trans

formed into perspiration. As his mind raced with

different possibilities, he remembered the emergenc

y call that his neighbor had done to his hometown

from the nearby community clinic – SSQ that stood f

or Station Sick Quarters, which was one of the

important places that had the privilege of the tele

phone connection. He was not sure if he would be

allowed to do a telephone call from there but never

theless the daring nature overtook the nervousness

in him and he quickly hopped on his bicycle scurryi

ng towards the clinic. In a few minutes, he was the

re

infront of the reception with small piece of paper

with the number written on it lest he forgot at the

last

minute. The dark , stout uniformed person had a sc

ornful look as Rajiv requested to do a telephone c

all

to his privileged friend. The uniformed person aske

d a few questions about his friend and his father t

o

validate if the request was genuine. After a little

over two minutes of questioning, he obliged Rajiv

to

use the telephone with an advice not to use the sam

e for more than three minutes. Thanking the

uniformed person, Rajiv went into the room where th

e communication device and the mode of

communication – Telephone was kept in the corner co

vered with a small transparent plastic sheet as a

cover against dust. Rajiv had never used the teleph

one before in his life but had seen it lot of times

in

the movies and he knew that he had use the circular

piece to dial the number , but he had never

experienced it himself. He had almost forgotten abo

ut his exams and the reason he was here and the

immediate task before him in the next three minutes

was to use this mode of communication called the

telephone. He realized that he was perspiring as mu

ch as he would have been in the cricket field but h

e

had to win over this battle in the next couple of m

inutes. With a slight trembling and almost wet righ

t

hand, he picked the receiver and started to stared

to dial from the left hand. An afterthought later,

he

switched his hands and started to dial from the rig

ht hand and with an air of uncertainty, brought the

receiver to his ears like what he had seen in the m

ovies. The uncertainty arose because both the ends

of

the bone like structure of the receiver were almost

similar and Rajiv was not sure if he was holding i

t

correctly. However, he had the initial joy of relie

f when he heard a rather strange and jarring sound

on

the receiver, which he had not heard before. He sta

rted to dial the numbers 1 followed by 3 followed b

y

9 each of which was preceded by the long time it to

ok for the dialing to complete. He waited anxiously

through his ears for his friends voice, but now he

started to hear a different ringing sound that was

slightly better than the earlier sound. After a co

uple of seconds, a stern adult masculine voice came

from the other side, saying ‘HELLO’. Rajiv not know

ing how to respond , quickly uttered back asking if

he

could speak to Arun. The impatient voice from the o

ther side blabbered something in Hindi and again in

English, which Rajiv could not hear properly becaus

e of the surrounding noise from the other side. He

realized that he had already spent two minutes and

had not even talked to his friend and with

apologetically requested if he could talk to his Ar

un whose number was 1-3-9. The male voice at the

other end had now realized that it was a novice on

the other end and he slowed down his conversation

and talked softly and slowly to inform that it was

the telephone exchange and not his friend’s house.

He

also did a great favour by mentioning that Rajiv wo

uld need to dial 9 before he dialed his friends

number. Before he hung up, the person also mentione

d to keep the receiver down once and lift again

and repeat the process. With an air of relief signs

of positivity and fingers crossed, Rajiv started a

ll over

again , this time dialing the numeral 9 followed by

1-3-9. He waited with anticipated breath to hear h

is

friends voice, while hearing the now familiar sound

of the ring from the other side. After couple of r

ings,

he did hear a voice and lo and behold, it was Arun

at the other end !!! Triumph at last ..

Rajiv was hearing a constant, mutter of voices that

was appearing faint on the speaker phone. He also

could hear someone familiar call out his name repea

tedly. He seemed to be coming back to reality and

now was fully awake and could hear clearly that his

US boss was asking Rajiv and others one by one

something, which he had no clue of..He had no inkli

ng of the discussion in the regular weekly

conference call but probably he had mastered the ar

t of managing the phone calls and quickly with

confidence , without any uncertainity Rajiv tapped

the ‘unmute’ button and with a firm and strong

voice waited for a small window of opportunity and

said – ‘ Rajiv here, I think this is a great strate

gy, I

Agree