Miss Call

Mobile phones are a necessity for everyone nowadays. My maids, milkman, Dhobi, every street vendor selling peanuts or vegetable feel so empowered to own a mobile phone today. For a long time I resisted getting a mobile myself until my kids prevailed on me hoping I would lend it to them to show off to their friends. That was 15 years back!  I cherish my childhood where there were no mobile phones and having a landline was also a great luxury. Our parents had no way to track us when we went out to play or sneaked out to the nearby roadside seller to buy the forbidden street foods!!  Today the mobile may seem like a formidable enemy for our children! Keeping track has never been so easy, though my son would say there are kids who find loopholes in this disadvantage to

Miss Call! This is so typical of India! I guess we all are so familiar with this most irritating phrase, which really makes me laugh or cry sometimes. I met my kabariwallah (junk buyer) the other day and wanted him to pay a visit to my house to pick up the junk I wanted to get rid off before Diwali, making way for Lakshmi to enter. He grinned and said, “miss call maar dena”. I am sure you would agree with me, which our American or British friends would have really wondered what he was talking about! I mean American-American and British- British, not Indian born Americans or British. My kabariwallah was trying to do his customer a great favour, which means I do not need to call him but just buzz him so that he would call me back and spend the money on the call. A collect call in a way! Customer is king and long live missed calls!

There are more dimensions to this that I suddenly discovered. Some bosses, bureaucrats, and many VIPs do want to feel that way by giving you a missed call and then wait for you to call. It is very intriguing to put any logic to this. Is this a cultural thing or only particular to us Indians?