What’s a voice like yours doing in a phone like this?

You know how it is when you realise the obvious has been staring you in the face for a long time, but you had other things to think about so you never gave the obvious a thought? You don’t? No matter.

In general, I am polite over the phone and listen to the caller even when sorely tempted to hang up mid-sentence because it is someone trying to hock something. But like everybody else, I too have my bad days when a pointless, ill-timed call from a telemarketer is just the invitation I need to let off steam. And then it happens. I rave and rant and try to teach the caller good manners and the inadvisability of calling someone in the middle of work or worse, middle of a nap.

It happened to me last week. And then the penny dropped. After years of picking up a ringing phone only to hear someone trying to sell me insurance or to ask if I would like to invest in something or the other, the true function of the telemarketer or spam caller in our society occurred to me. It is to help us keep our sanity. Without them, we would be shouting and screaming at our spouses or children or neighbours. It was such a startling discovery that I had to sit down for a bit and take deep breaths.

When spam callers call us by our first name and do everything they can to irritate us, it gives us an opportunity to shout and scream at them instead and retain our sense of balance and good humour. And save our spouses and children and neighbours from an earful or two. Spam callers may have prevented more divorces than we can imagine.

Sometimes they allow us to try out our humour, as when we reply, “Have you bought this insurance you are trying to sell me? Can I call you next week and check? What is your personal telephone number? Does your mother know this is how you make a living? What’s a voice like yours doing in a phone like this?”

But mainly, they help us let off steam – loudly, persistently, ungrammatically, often suggesting physically impossible actions for the caller to indulge in. Even the pets in the house, cats, dogs, and goldfish, are happy you have channelised all that anger which might otherwise have led to their being kicked at.

Someday you will read an academic paper on the vital importance of spam calls and telemarketers to our society. They help us let off steam and should be thanked for their service, perhaps, with a Spammer of the Year Award.

Heads of state, unfortunately, are protected from spam callers. They have no place to let off steam. And that is how wars begin. If only a spam caller had been allowed to get through to Putin now and then, we might not have had the war in Ukraine.

Next time you scream at a spam caller, remember: it is a social service.

(Suresh Menon is Contributing Editor, The Hindu)