Fear is the key

Today’s hectic life demands that holidays also have a killing schedule. Art is long and time is short, so I chalked out a thrilling itinerary, wherein the children and I visited monuments at a break–neck pace. By the end of the second day the girls had become rather querulous, and finally lapsed into glassy eyed silence. Faced with the prospect of a mutiny, I was finally forced to wave the white flag in the form of a query as to whether they were interested in going to the Mall. The effect was magical. They discovered afresh the qualities of the aged relative which had hitherto been hidden under layers of history. Within no time, we were in a crowded Mall peopled by youngsters wearing impossible clothes. The object of the kids’ attention was the ‘Scary House’ show being touted as an experience to remember, so I bought four tickets—for my daughters Tanvee, a sedate youngster if ever there was one, Jayati five years her junior, and for Jayati’s bosom pal, Upasana, who had already seen the show and was therefore doubling as our friend, philosopher and guide.

We entered the dim interiors, heartened by Upasana’s whisper that it was going to be such fun. A ghost leapt at us with a blood-curdling yell—Jayati’s equal and opposite reaction was to bang on the door and scream to be let out. So we left her outside the entrance and came back in, with markedly less enthusiasm than before. There were some faintly lit stairs to be mounted and as we neared the top a mummified hand brushed across our faces, causing Tanvee to drop her spectacles and do an undignified jig around, screeching all the while. I told her to stand still and not crush the sole pair she possessed. Thereafter the thrills awaiting us had to be put on hold in favour of some more mundane business, namely, rummaging round on the floor. Finally, I located her spectacles and put them inside my bag, because something told me there would be repeat performances.

Determined not to be shaken by these developments we carried on and came up bang against the wall, so Upasana squeaked ‘which way do we go?’, to which a ghost, disgusted at having been pre-empted, said in as menacing a whisper as it could manage, ‘turn right.’ We turned the corner and there it was—a corpse, hanging by his neck and swaying gently from side to side. Tanvee let out a horrified shriek, slipped her hand into mine and then with another piercing yell, demanded to know whether the hand was mine or of some ghost that had crept up behind us. These chilling notions made the intrepid Upasana tremble with fear and she said ‘Aunty, please hold my hand as well.’ I gave both a brief lecture on how monuments had been far more enjoyable than this.

And thus we crept forward, with ghosts hissing sibilantly all around, until we came to the high point of the whole affair—a dead body on a cot which shot into you the moment you stealthily inched your way towards the exit and freedom. The ghosts luckily, had by now become unnerved by the prospect of getting a dressing down from this scolding adult and meekly let us go when I said sternly that enough was enough. Finally we were out, the two girls a quivering mass of nerves blithely greeted by an enviably cool and composed Jayati. Needless to add, we spent the rest of the holiday visiting museums and admiring objects d’ art sedately confined to glass cases. In management jargon, the takeaway from the experience was a distinctly reduced admiration of the redoubtable Harry Potter as it had been keenly felt by all that meeting up with ghosts on a one-to-one basis was a lot less than fun.

Ring, ring, why don't you give me a call

The excitement in the air was palpable whenever the telephone rang. This was the dinosaur era, better described as P.T.D, or Pre-TV Days. No doubt All India Radio was alive and kicking but it only occasionally broadcast songs, probably believing strongly that students should study in preparation of the infernal exams, and elders should meditate in preparation of their inevitable passing on. So radio programmes were either informative or spiritual lest the captive audience fall prey to the lures of vulgar entertainment. A critique of the simple living high thinking days of yore which made most people such crashing bores, is only too tempting a subject; one somehow drags oneself back to the topic of the ubiquitous telephone, our window to the world.

The shrillness of its ringing tones notwithstanding, there was an instant sense of anticipation as to who the lucky object of its affections would be. We would fall over ourselves in trying to reach the jangling instrument pronto, each mentally rehearsing the casually sophisticated tone in which ‘Hello’ would be essayed. However, the greeting was invariably a breathless one, the underlying note being one of triumph at having outpaced the siblings and reached the finishing line first.

The P&T department had generously allowed the consumer to choose any colour as long as it was black. And so, unprepossessing black instruments, quite frog-like in appearance, had pride of place in every home. This pompous bearer of tidings smugly looked down its nose at its humble companion, the sofa-cum-bed. Like rice on the dining-table, the sofa-cum-bed was the staple diet of every household since house guests tended to outnumber the host family at any given time. But the selfsame piece of furniture, though sedate in appearance like a quintessential aged relative, played its double role with élan.

One had never been the sociable, gregarious kind, and tended to retreat into the interiors of the home when guests descended. But the ringing tones of the phone were like Lorelei and drew one out like a magnet. Even at the risk of having to converse with the eagle eyed aunts of the colony, one dashed out in time to pick up the receiver and drawl a cool ‘Hello’. There was no caller ID or mobile phone screen to give a clue, and the anonymity of the caller added to the excitement. Was it a class-mate, friend, or—palpitations here—an admirer? Of course, it could very well be the neighbour, asking if we had any extra milk, or simply wanting to share the intricate design of the violently coloured sweater she had just knitted.

The suspense was always killing.  More often than not, the calls were from the control room, giving the lowdown on the transformer and frequency situation, and one mutely held out the receiver to Papa. Temporary setback no doubt, but it never deterred one from making the fifty metre dash next time round too. The very idea of Someone Calling Up made the most stoic heart go pitter-patter and the laziest feet, clitter-clatter.

But God forbid if you needed to place a long distance call through the telephone exchange. Subscriber Telephone Dialling had made its first, tentative forays only into large cities, and we had to content ourselves with booking trunk calls. So one’s stroke of luck started with any of the staff being present in the exchange to take note of the request. The average pleasant morning/ sunny winter afternoon were your determined rivals for their attention. Chatty ladies exchanging notes on recipes were apt to pick up on your fifth attempt and inform you helpfully that all lines were down since the past week and if they had their way,  for the foreseeable future as well.

I vividly remember the time I was expecting to get the results of one of the competitive examinations I had appeared for. The phone rang; I grabbed the receiver and held on to it with clammy hands. The gentleman at the other end proceeded to establish first that I was neither spy, alien nor criminal- in- the- making. He then melted sufficiently to ask me in tones of extreme friendliness whether I had decided to sit for a certain bank recruitment exam—‘Intehaan diye the ka’ is what I recall. Throat dry, I managed to croak a ‘yes’. He then said Papa had asked him to convey the result telephonically as the direct lines weren’t working.

My heart was hammering so hard I could barely hear him. Just then a long awaited ‘Shukla ji’ apparently decided to drop in, so Mr. Singh, my friend, philosopher and guide, decided to clarify the position on various sundry issues that had been niggling his conscience for a while. I was by now contemplating wrapping the dratted telephone cord around someone’s neck—no prizes for guessing whose—when Mr. Singh came back to the subject in hand with much reluctance and said ‘Haan to phir hum bata na rahe the, ki aapka ho gaya hai’. Whew! I had almost passed out by the time he imparted the news that I had been selected. But then I guess that’s why it’s all so fresh in the mind even after almost twenty-five years have elapsed since that momentous day.