Mobiles and me

What is the problem with me? I cannot maintain a single mobile number for more than 6 months?

Is it just spam that makes me change numbers? Or am I afraid that my past will haunt me? Or only people from whom I want to stay away keep calling me?

My Mobile History starts in 1999. Yes the year when Bharti started its service near my home. My first set was a Siemens C35. Nokia had not made such noise then. Other than this brand, what were on offer were a Vodafone (which was known as a UK brand but no history in India) & Motorola (The set was just like police walkie talkie). I went along with my friend to his friend’s home who sold the set to me.

Yes my first set was a second hand set. The cost was Rs.3500. I was getting a stipend of Rs. 2500 then. After buying the set, I needed a SIM Card to start using this set. I bought a Prepaid SIM card of Bharti (It was called Magic then). The number was 9845007541 The out going charges were Rs 6 Per minute & incoming was Rs 4/5 (not sure on that). A currency of 300 rupees used to workout for 15 days.

The connectivity was bad also. Inside the city, you had a favorably good connection. You had to speak loud for the other person to hear you. Hands free were not so clear then & there were no FM phones available. Just 2 kilometers from the National Highway, you would loose all connectivity.

All incoming were just missed calls. All outgoing were thru phone booths or office phones. Very few calls were received & that too calls were received based on where I was. If I was in a group of friends & needed to act important I would be receiving the call or else based on the number of rings the call came I would be able to gauge the message.

In my friends circle, a call from any number other than home number meant
3 rings meant “Come out. We are in the normal meeting place.”
2 rings meant “Call me back.”
Incessant rings meant “Emergency. Call back urgently or receive the phone”

Even in my home, when I went to other states the incoming was based on number of rings from my home number.
2 rings meant “All are OK here. How are you now”
5 rings meant “Come fast. Missing you here”
Continues rings meant “Emergency. Call back urgently or receive the phone”

SMS was not used other than the templates or wishing a friend who is out of state a happy occasion.

Then the worst part was receiving a call when you were out of the mobile circle. For a person calling from here the cost was just 1:20 in a normal phone for 3 minutes, but for me who received the phone it would end up from Rs 20 to Rs 50 based on how far I was.

Even recharging a prepaid connection when out of circle was a headache. You just could not buy recharge cards available there & use it. You had to call somebody from your friends group, plead them to buy a recharge card here, then scratch & tell you the entire 16 digit number which you had to enter there to recharge the phone.
I used that number till Reliance came out with the 500 rupee set. That ended my first usage of the mobile number. In the meantime mobile sets kept changing & frequency became too drastic. Initially I used to change sets every 3 months, later it came down to 15 days. Even before I could complete games in the set, I was changing them. In the duration incoming became free & outgoing came down very drastically. Even STD rates just fell flat.

The reason why I abandoned the mobile connection was because the initial value of having a mobile waned away & the amount of calls which I received because of so many contacts in my Friend / Office / Relative circle really forced me out of the mobile arena.

Once I distanced the phone, I felt much happy & stayed away from Mobile phone.

The next venture into phones was because of my close friend & also of my girlfriend. Until then she had no mobile & so I too did not require it. I used to meet her on her return from college & that was enough for that day. Once she came out of college & began to go to work, the timetable of our meet erased. Meeting her became a headache & her parents started suspecting things.

She called me one day & told me that she has got a Tata Indicom number & that I too had to buy the same to remain connected to her. Moreover the offer provided free calls between Tata to Tata.

So with this pressure, I & my close friend who until then did not have a phone decided to buy the Tata mobile which gave 2 years connectivity with no recharges & calls between Tata & Tata were free & unlimited.

I decided to keep this number very private & so less of calls & only required calls.
Without my knowledge this number got circulated to my old friends (who were plenty & whom I had distanced myself because of lot of reasons. Someday I will write a post on this), new friends & relatives. Again this turned out to be a hell of problem. Always on the phone & lot of wastage of time.

My girlfriend’s family decided to get her married & found a suitable groom for her. She hesitated first but later told me directly that she is going forward with the marriage as she does not want to hurt her family. Hence I should stop calling on her number.

This was the final nail in the coffin for me. I became a total devdas after this for nearly a year. I became very lazy in my approach to any work, too restless to sit in any place for long & too bored to even receive calls which came my way. ( I will discuss this in a other post)

Luckily I did not quit my job. I stayed put to my job & began to focus all my unhappiness into a motivation to do the job much better & being lazy much simpler.
All the accolades that came my way were taken in the same spirit that I took when she told me good bye.

Professional Life began growing in an incredible pace, but my personal state of mind became too stale & stagnant. No victory or sorrow would affect my stale mind. Deceit was what I felt then.

My new company gave its own mobile for me use & the old Tata phone became too heavy for my pocket.

Finally I left the Tata number & threw the SIM in a gutter.

Presently I have no personal mobile number for any of my family to call nor am I giving away my company mobile to anyone. So I only receive calls from my company’s people any time & reply back. Calls end in maximum 2 minutes.

But my final question is - Is this my single case only or are there many people like me ?

Send in your comments.