After attending a day full of interviews and submitting CVs, I was fast asleep owing to the tedium. Just when I was about to drift into a deep sleep, a mysterious phone call ended it.
It was pitch black all around except for the light from my cell phone. I reached out for my cell and saw a strange, new number. After debating whether to attend the call or not, I decided to answer it thinking it could be my prospective employer hurrying to recruit me at the earliest.
Instead, what greeted me was pure Chennai Tamil. “ Dai entha area da, ne? (Which area do you belong to?) I have caught you red-handed!” began the voice without even bothering to introduce himself. Before I could answer him a barrage of questions followed. The stranger accused me of being a motorcycle thief and wanted to know my whereabouts in Coimbatore.
My vehement denials about the accusations cut no ice with him. I retorted saying that he has dialled the wrong number and that I stayed in Chennai. But this angry young man was in no mood to mellow down. In an effort to intimidate me, he handed the phone to a police constable who reiterated that I bring the motorcycle back and surrender at the police station.
When it dawned upon me that I could not convince them, I challenged them to catch me if they can! Finally, when abuses were being hurled from the other end owing to my defiance and disregard for the law, I heard the guy conveying to the constable that he had dialled the wrong number!!
It seems that the guy had interchanged the last two numbers while dialling and I ended up receiving the call instead of the real culprit. Sanity was eventually restored and the “avengers” from the other side called truce. In an attempt to extend the olive branch the guy apologised to me for the fiasco. Upon being asked how he could make a mistake while handling a sensitive issue, his reply startled me. He said, “I own a smartphone and thought that it couldn’t make any mistakes.”
Adverts proclaiming that our country is becoming smart and people need to switch to smartphones needs a tweak here. The country is becoming smart, but people are becoming dumb.
