This marvel
of inventions from Alexander Graham Bell has been a witness to myriad of human
emotions, adventures (and misadventures), wars, espionage, business deals and
romance. Let’s take a few pages from the memory lane of romance through the
phone.
Asian
countries were still struggling to build the networks and phone lines were rare
even in the big cities. Here is a Romeo in an Indian University campus
desperate to talk with his Juliet 400 miles away. Some young guys may not even
believe it that it could take over 12 to 24 hours then for an operated assisted
call (trunk call) to mature. In biting cold our Romeo used to sit on a bench in
the Public call office (PCO). Alas! Luck was not his side always ....finally
when the call came through ....his lady love had already left home to attend her
English lectures. The exercise got repeated weeks after weeks except for an
occasional stroke of luck when the lady was able to grab the phone first on
other side before someone else in a large household might answer the phone and then bang it saying.....wrong number !!!!
Rollover to 1970s and 80s…..Direct Dialling and IDD was
introduced in some cities and generated huge excitement. Love birds could take
a chance to keep making attempts with a hope to get their partner on the phone.
One out ten chances the right person may get to pick the phone first …on other
occasions…parents may answer and they coined a phrase “ghost calls” and preferred to blame the
Telecom Company for a “bad connection” rather than admitting that young kid/s in
the house are up to some romancing adventure. When caught they were given some
cool dressing down.
Interestingly
a new telephony culture emerged in many cities with S.T.D. booths (managed and
metered direct dialling kiosks). You could be 30th person in line
sometimes especially after 10 PM in India when highly benevolent state owned
phone Companies started offering 50 % discount on long distance for night rates.
Our Romeo had to carry a food pack and wait patiently in line for hours to be the
first to make a call after 10 PM. Sure enough partner on the other end will
have to hover around single phone in the house or seek a favour from the neighbour
to get some privacy. Worst was old uncle outside the calling booth edging him
to cut short the call. He will make all kind of ugly gestures having guessed
the nature of conversation or by pressing his ears close to glass door of the
booth and hear a few romantic words. He mused....there were no phones in my days !!!New Mobile World…..
Paradigm
shift and Mr. Bell’s phone has a new “avatar”. It made life easy for romancing
couples. Parents started wondering why this sudden desire in the young ones to
have ‘walks in the park’ every now and then. Health conscious they thought…..imagine.
Rest is now
history with the smart phones, iPods and 24X7 communications. So this valentine
day billions of multimedia messages will get exchanged globally and cell phone
will ring non-stop. We wish them the best of romancing on phone and hope they
thank Mr. Bell sometime for his amazing invention. Good luckhttp://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AOldPhone.jpg
All credits
for the pictures acknowledged.
