Wrong numbers can be quite interesting and I think that they work like pickles work with normal food. In fact, I welcome wrong numbers more than the right numbers. First and foremost, wrong numbers never mean a signal for work. Normal calls are mostly about work or future work and for work you have to move your limbs – a proposition I truly hate these days when merely moving fingers over the keyboard can get people like Kamalji, poetbittersweet, Sudha Sharma, B S Keshav, Nargis Natarajan, Girdhar Gopal, Chandrika Radhakrishnan, Lakshmi Mukundan, Apurba20, Karan Diwan, Ashualec, Bharatborn, Rama Rao Garimella and a host of others wowing and drooling over your prowess. Also, for the first time in my life I have the satisfaction that Amitabh Bachchan is copying yours truly and it seems that Amir Khan has also begun to copy me. You see, I became a blogger much before these Johnnies come lately!
But I am digressing. Let me come to wrong numbers and just why they are so good. There are many pluses as far as wrong numbers are concerned. First of all, they help you recognize your immense creativity. Believe me, I would never have become a writer unless some wrong numbers had not made me come face to face with the reality that your truly was a very creative person after all. When you get a wrong number, you have to think on your feet and come up with a reply that will make the other guy blow the top and, in the process, make you gleeful. It is a highly skilled job. Most people do not have the skill. They merely say, “wrong number” and hang up. I had once read that saying something that is obvious is rather vulgar and therefore I normally desist from stating the obvious.
Secondly, most of the time the person who has dialed the wrong number is an idiot. Therefore, he legitimately becomes a source of entertainment. Look at the following example.
Till it was changed, the State Electricity Board substation number was very similar to our home number and therefore, in the course of any given day, we received several calls asking about the progress or repair work or resumption of power supply etc. I was home that morning and received a call.
“Hello, when will the power supply be resumed?”
“You have got the wrong number. My name is Avinash and I cannot predict anything like that,” I answered politely.
Two minutes later the phone shrieked again.
“Hello, when will the power supply be resumed?” asked the same voice again.
“Ask a week later and I will answer your question,” I said.
“What the hell do you mean? What kind of an answer is that?” the man blew his temper.
“You see, it will take me one week to learn astrology and then, if you come back, I will be able to predict. If you want a quicker answer, you should be ringing up the State Electricity Board,” I said sagely.
A few minutes later the phone decided to screech again.
“Hello, when will the power supply be resumed?” the same man again.
“The power supply will be resumed when the rains abate,” I informed him.
“Rains? Rains?” the man shouted into the phone as if I was talking from London. “What kind of a joke is this? Where are the rains? It is summer you fool.”
“If you kindly look out your window, you will see a cloud on the right hand side of the horizon. When that cloud has finished raining its water down, the power supply will be resumed.”
The man went literally mad shouting all kinds of abuses into the phone. This was just beautiful. At such times, abuses are the most humorous words possible.
I will now tell you of another instance when my on the spur creativity was provoked by one such wrong number.
“When are you going to be at the office?” growled a voice on the other end without even as much as a preamble or a preface. Obviously it was someone who was used to be the boss.
“Papa to ghar mein nahin hain,” I answered in the most childlike voice I could throw out of my cigarette and liquor hardened throat. (Papa is not at home.)
“Oh, you are his son?” asked the same man, now all suddenly mollified by the skinny voice.
“No uncle, I am the daughter,” I enlightened him.
“Oh! Beta, how old are you?” he asked very pleasantly.
“Uncle, I am studying in the fifth standard and math is very difficult.”
“Oh! I can understand. I was very weak in math too,” he said. “does your papa not help you out?”
“No uncle. He cannot. He is also weak.”
“I know, I know,” he said. “When is your papa going to be back home?”
“I don’t know uncle. The police will bring him back.”
“The police?” he said, incredulous. “What happened? Is everything alright?”
“Police has taken him to jail.”
“Oh my God,” the man said. “Give the phone to your mother, beta.”
“Can’t. She too is in jail.”
“What! What happened?”
“They had stolen my chocolate yesterday and so I reported to the police,” I said.
At this point probably the man understood that he had been had and hung up quickly without contributing more to the conversation.
Lately there have been wrong numbers at Sulekha too. It is my habit that I click randomly at the most recent blogs. Sometimes you hit paydirt that way. I hit dirt that day.
I clicked on a blog that was from Anil Jain. The name must be false because such people do not give you their real name. The blog said:
I like married women. If you are interested, please write to my email id which is ……
I made a note of the email id and then, in my spare time gave him a mail pretending that I was a woman named Rajjo and that I was married to a man whose upper dentures were permanently outside his lips when he closed his mouth. The reply came within an hour. Here it is:
Dear Rajjo,
I can very well understand your plight. With such people whose teeth are outside, you cannot kiss very well. Your entire life is being wasted and I am so pained at your dissatisfied life. I think we should meet up.
I gave the following reply:
Dear Anil,
I am so overjoyed to receive such a quick response from you. Goes to show how much you care for me. My own husband, in our six months married life, has never shown any care for me. He has not even gone to a dentist inspite of my repeated requests. I think we must meet.
The following reply arrived:
Rajjo
Ooh, six months only? That means you are married and very young. We must meet. I am already burning for you, my darling. Permit me to call you darling since we have already come very near each other mentally what with your husband’s teeth permanently out of his mouth. Please, please, please, please, please, please tell me where and when you want to meet me.
I stopped giving any response after this because I got frightened by the ardent tone of the letter. Very soon, within a matter of days, my mailbox was overflowing with about a hundred mails from the Jain who wanted to go digamber very quickly. Even today the mails continue to arrive and I am tired of deleting them on a daily basis. So, today I have prepared the parting response:
Dear Anil,
You need not bother yourselves so much. Please take care of yourselves because you are really a very good and caring person. My problem has solved itself. You see, a month back my husband had a fall from the staircase and, luckily as it were, he fell mouth first and broke all his frontal teeth which were, even at that time, projecting outside the lips. Although there were several stitches, the good news is that now he has been given dentures which fit inside the mouth. He looks rather handsome now because of the fall and its consequences.
I am now very happy with this new improved husband.
Only, I feel sorry that one fall here has made all your dreams crash too.
I hope that this letter will stop the storm I helped unleash. Because if it does not, I will be proven the idiot on the other side of the phone!
Close
Hi Vivek,
Thanks for the comment.
Who knows one the smartasses that you got on the other end when you rung wrong was I?
Regards
Avinash
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Good One Avinash. But i pray i dont get your number "wrongly" courtesy BSNL
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Thanks Shail. Must have seemed like an oasis to you after having read the macabre rat story
Regards
Avinash
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Hilarious!! Superb!
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Hi caravan
Loved your anecdote. And no, Rajjo was not inspired by 1942. In fact Rajjo was a girl who lived in my grandfather's village and who was so beautiful, I kept ogling at her most of the time.
Thanks and regards
Avinash
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Hi Anil Jain,
Meat? Did you say meat? I thought what I did to you was rather neat. Anyway, better luck next time. I hope you really meet up with a mature lady whose husband's teeth are all sightseeing out of the mouth.
Also, you should be actually grateful to me that i did not prolong the story and extended your excitable agony further as some bloggers have suggested in their comments.
Avinash
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Hi Poonam
They never come back asking for Bhushan. But new people will - asking for someone else and then you can show your quick creativity. That is really fun.
Thanks for the comment.
Avinash
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Hi psych
They do have a long history. I did what you did too. But the best was always when I got dialled by the wrong man - then the fun really began because you had to cook up a story standing right there without even a moment's notice.
Thanks for the comment.
Avinash
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Mr. Avinash,
This is Jain. I just read what you did to me. You are dead meat, man
Anil Jain.
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Avinashjee
That was a wonderfully refreshing read! Thanks!!
I'd like to share the anecdote about a person who was so flustered at the repeated recept of wrong numbers that in exasperation he shouted back: "You have the wrong fool, you number!"
PS: Was the name Rajjo inspired by 1942-A Love Story?
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