Talk talk

The office phone rang - I picked it up and said: "Jeevan Sahara Kendra, how can I help you?"

The voice said: "Hi son, this is Dad"

I was surprised to hear his voice. "Guess where we are?"

Where would they be? They had been down to Kerala, for a large convention that their old friend and mentor George Verwer was addressing.

"We are in Mumbai" Dad said "Waiting for the Kochi-Mumbai passengers to get off and the Delhi-bound passengers to get on our plane."

I could hear Mum talking in the background.

"Who is Mum talking to?" I asked.

"She is talking to Sheba" Dad laughed. Sheba was at the JSK clinic - a 10 min walk from my office. It was a busy day and she had patients in her examination room - but a call from Mum trumped that - for some time at least.

Here were Mum and Dad - sitting next to each other in an airplane parked at Mumbai airport - talking simultaneously to Sheba and myself - seated in different offices. The miracle of technology that helps us talk like that!

I am still enthralled by the miracle of having a phone in my hand. To be able to call up across town - or across the country while I am walking to my office. To track down a loved one when they are far from any phone booth or office.

And of course I have to think back.

To 1977 when we were wide-eyed in the U.S. of A. Dad had gone to the Mall to register for a phone. The locals were complaining, because they had to wait for 1/2 an hour.

Dad turned to them and told them that in Bombay we had waited for 7 years to get a phone. No bribes for the Eichers of course - and those were the days of our pseudo-socialist republic. It seemed impossible to us that the very next day folks from Bell Telephone showed up and promptly installed a working phone for us. Talk about the land of plenty...

And then there was the experience - many years later - of making a 'trunk call' to an international number from Mussoorie. In the 2.5 years I was away from home in my first stint of college I never talked to my parents in India. In 1989, when I was back in Mussoorie for a year of 'independent study', we had to call the US for some reason. We tramped over to Telephone Exchange - deep in the heart of the bazaar - next to the Cambridge bookstore. It was night - since we wanted to talk to someone (was it our grandparents?) during their day-time. We had 'booked' the time with the clerk in the Exchange well in advance.

And then we had the great moment of talking to the other side of the world. Well, talking would not be the word. We literally had to shout... "H O W .. A R E . Y O U ?"... Y E S, W E ... A R E .. A L L .... F I N E ! .... WHAAAAT??" and so it went. Precious money flushed down the tubes - the rupees disappearing at a dizzying rate as the seconds slipped by - and most of what we heard was a harsh buzz of static with the occasional word slipping through edgewise. And that which actually was said was pretty much tripe.

So a silent prayer of thanks for the miracles of fibre optics and satellites. For the massive minatureisation of communications. For the rabid competition here in India between mobile providers and betwixt the burgeoning group of broad-band-wallahs. May your tribe increase dear friends...

But thanks most of all to the Giver of the words themselves. Precious packets of meaning - sped between us through mouth and air and ear.

What does it profit a man if the sound quality is pin-fall clear - but the words themselves are devoid of love?

We have been so blessed to have so much of the later. In spades.