A Tribute to my Landline

On sunday, the 6th of April, the land line rang at our house, and for a minute everyone was startled at having heard a noise that was so distinctively familiar, but at the same time, was something that hadn't been heard for so long that it sounded unusual all the same. It was similar to listening to the voice of an old friend, but after he'd hit puberty, with a time gap of nearly eight years or so, such that the voice had changed but you knew it was him nevertheless.


Caller: Hi! Can I speak to so-and-so?
Me: May I know who's calling, please?
Caller: I am XYZ.
Me: Hold on for a minute, I'll just pass on the phone.
Caller: Thanks!

A pretty regular and random exchange between two people, but it was something that seemed like a blast from the past. I began thinking of how long it had been since I had such a conversation with anyone. With the presence of cell phones being the norm, its rare that anyone in the present times would usually get to talk that way.

Before cell phones paved their way into our lives and changed forever the way we went about with our daily existence, the grand old land lines ruled the roost. At home in Mysore, we had an antique piece for our telephone, the one which people used in the late 50's or early 60's movies to relay secret messages or locations where the kidnapped would be exchanged for ransom and then fail to show up.

It had an old fashioned dial, and a heavy receiver and with the two together, nobody in our family was required to go to the gym for bicep workouts, and one's fingers became sturdy and well exercised to bear the brunt of canings received in school for not completing assigned homework, or being late to class, or being inattentive during lessons or for being an errant student, though invariably it ended up being a hitherto unseen ecclectic combination of more than one of the four aforementioned misdemeanours.

Needless to say, the butterfly effects of us having had the phone model we did made my teachers in school healthy as well, and gave them their much needed workout cum catharsis, something that I would get good Karma for. Now who'd imagine one'd be entitled to good Karma for not having been a good student, eh? Loopholes aplenty!

As times changed, and as the locations of the rented houses we lived in changed, so did the corresponding telephone exchange whose jurisdiction we fell under, and it was the norm for each of the telephone exchange officials who came to connect the phone and hand us the telephone directory to implore with us to upgrade to the new telephones, complete with push buttons and speaker phone and caller ID to ignore blank calls.

I was certain the blank calls were because I had turned 13 and hence fallen into the eligible male category, although we later found out that it was some toddler in the neighbourhood whose baby-sitter's idea of keeping the kid occupied was for him to press random numbers on the telephone. That sort of explains why the voice on the other end was goo goo gaa gaa over me! Story of my teenage love-life.

Repeated requests notwithstanding, it was a collective decision for us not to upgrade to the new models, even though the exchange offered them to us for free! We were dinosaurs and were proud of our prehistoric phone. Plus, the management at home sort of figured out that the most loquacious ones who'd use the phone copiously would be dissuaded from doing so if one got extensively tired of holding up the receiver, or having to repeatedly dial the number in the absence of a lovely redial key.

The increase in telephone bill amounts in arithmetic progression with a high common difference between two successive members of the series disproved this assumption, and other means, including asking the teachers use the cane with greater frequency had to be then resorted to.

That was the saga of the outgoing calls from our phone. The tales related to the incoming calls was something else altogether.

It is a well established fact that until a boy's voice breaks, and the vocal chords are fully developed at the onset of puberty, that it is sort of hard to tell if it is a male voice, unless one would, at the tender ages between 6 and 12 resort to using expletives with gay abandon. However, at that formative stage of my life when I inculcated within me everything that my folks, the television, the newspapers and Indrajal comics taught me, I was expletive free.

This led to pretty funny situations (in retrospect) as I had been made the de-facto answering machine when nobody else was around to receive their calls. I was mistaken, on some occasions to be my Mum, my sister or my grandma, and they sometimes in turn were mistaken to be me.

Not that I was a stud in voice recognition either. Most of my friends' sisters I thought were their Mums and so on and so forth. This let to a situation that had a veritable comedy of errors associated with it, as one went about trying to navigate through embarassing situations in order to take the right message or get through to the right person in the household.

There was one instance where a family friend had remarked about the fact that I had impeccable phone manners, and how hard it was for the kids of today to be polite to elders and all that. My head was swollen no end with the praise meted out, as the center of gravity of my body shifted, as a result of which I had trouble walking for the next few days thereafter.

I think I would have been unceremoniously ejected out of my household in order to go out on my own to earn money had call centers sprung up then the way they've done now, more so if child labour laws hadn't been passed by then and the UNHRC hadn't raised such a hue and cry about it.

Thankfully, all that I got was a pat on the back and a few extra pieces of chocolate as I was indulgently let off to play when the adults continued their conversations, for I had my 3rd grade final exams the next day, and I still hadn't learnt where the Manasarovar lake was located, and I was not able to plot the course of the Narmada or the Tapti river.

The times they are-a changing now. Everyone at home has their own cell phones. In fact, I am certain that this is the way things are headed in every household in the country, and its not something I am particularly sanguine about.

Its been a move long pending, but over the past three weeks, I've finally reached the place where I've made up my mind to make minimal use of my cellphone, except under exceptional circumstances or to talk to people I know I can't see, but would still want to talk to. Friends and family who are geographically removed from my current physical location would fall under that category, and I'm subsisting on the usage of my office extension for intra-office telephone calls.

I'd prefer to meet people the old way as well, plan for a time and a place and make sure to get there as promised, rather than use the cell phone as a mechanism for constant updating of one's position.

I know cellphones have become a necessary evil, and that although what I am saying sounds nice in theory, and might be hard to put into practise, every time I reach out for my cell to lead me into temptation, my mind wanders back through the recesses of time and space to my old antique earth-quake proof landline with its shiny black dial and 1 kg receiver, and I think of all the fun times that I've had thanks to it, and I wonder whether it will ever be possible for things to be that way again.

For better or for worse, I think those thoughts are better off as memories. Plus, my current ring tone, should I ever choose to remove my phone out off silent / vibrating mode is that of an old phone ringing, as a dedication to the times gone by.