In 2000, when my boss returned from a holiday to Singapore, he purchased a new mobile phone from there. He handed over his used mobile to me. I was overjoyed to use a mobile handset at a time when only a few had just started using obnoxious pagers. I took the fashionable Finnish slip-in cellular phone to my friend Rajgopal who had also just started his telecommunication business.
I purchased the strange looking SIM card from him for Rs 250 and pronto, I made my first call to my father’s landline. I was excited to tell him that I was standing in the middle of the road and talking to him. He sounded dismayed. After a little more than four minutes on the call, I saw something on the display. It read: “Rs.55 has been deducted from your account for the 4.73 minutes duration of your call. Your balance is Rs.195.”
I was shocked. The look on my face prompted Raj to tell me that calls were charged at Rs 11 per minute. I then made a few calls to the hotel in which I was working. Then my balance dropped to Rs 10. After that, I couldn’t make anymore calls. I then got another scratch coupon for Rs 250 from Raj. Then there was another calling spree to my friends and relatives. I was showing off my new possession and was enjoying their reactions when they heard the noise of traffic and vehicles moving in the background.
By the next day, I recharged more than three times. I had spent a whopping Rs 1,000 on my new possession. The damage was already done. My parents, friends and relatives started calling me back. They wanted to check whether I really owned a mobile phone. I kept losing money for incoming calls at the rate of Rs 4 per minute. I got irritated. I strictly asked them not to call me for frivolous things.
A few days later, the telecom agency announced a free messaging service. But I didn’t know to whom I would send text messages. So I kept sending messages to Raj every now and then. He too replied instantaneously; we discussed the features of mobile telephony. We possessed something which only a few possessed. But today, this hand-held device has evolved into an instrument that is an integral part of human life. A person without a smartphone is considered technologically bankrupt!
K S SAJIT
Email: getsajit@gmail.com