As a child I was acquainted to old Black, solid, dial-up telephone instrument of Indian Telephone Industries Ltd. marketed and serviced by local govt. body, in this case Delhi Telephones (DT) when some of my siblings, totaling 3, i.e. two brothers and one sister, suddenly fell sick; and me on tow by at least 15 – 20 steps behind my tall daddy (to my size at that time). At that time his one steps used to measure up my 4 or 5 tiny steps. Thus, virtually, I had to constantly run in tow to keep phase with him that too with a margin of 1 yard at least. That urgent rush to our architect neighbor Sardarji’s bungalow, to make an urgent call on DT’s black dial up telephone instrument. In fact that lone black telephone instrument, in the neighborhood, was a boon to my father and mother and other neighbors in dire need since they were quite kind hearted Sardarji family. Not only that, it was also an only resource of solace from the doctor at the other end of the telephone line of Delhi Telephones, preceding the imminent hiring a Yellow & Black ambassador taxi to either the family Dr. or hospital as the situation demands. I wanted to share a big secret of my being in tow, in the rushing-ritual of going to Sardarji uncle for phoning was that I mostly used to get an opportunity to say Hello to Dr.Uncle and hear
a few endearing sentences from him or Dr. Aunty and that used to really used to enthrall me with a sense of achievement as if I was the first and only person to travel to Mars, Sun, Venus or may be Moon too! Well this love affair with Delhi Telephone’s Black dial up instrument continued till they all reached at a certain age and their childhood sicknesses too vanished with growing age. So we got accustomed to dialing the numbers by inserting our delicate fingers into the dial hole and most of the times finding the number busy and dialing on and on. So these painful exercise of the 1st finger (index finger) getting sore due to repeated dialing continued till the life of dialup telephones in the monopoly of ITI remained. I used to see all telephone operators using either, pencil, ball pen or fountain pen end to dial the numbers as they had to do it all 9-30 – 5-30 x 6 x years together! Then government lifted its control in manufacturing the Black heavy dial up instrument. The phone and cradle used to be so heavy that in emergencies it could be used as a piece de defense to protect our life effectively to give a knock on head or temple and the intruder could be assured of a peaceful ‘Shava Asana’ posture used in Yoga parlance.
Then beneficial de-control process brought in many players with more and more attractive telephone instruments slowly phasing out Black heavy dial up telephone. New telephone instruments were more attractive in color, looks and performance (no more painful or sore index finger), they were clearer in voice reception and reproduction and best of all became very cheap. That was a transition from black to vibrant colors. Then they replaced by push button telephones (PBTs) which were very handy, small and painless to index fingers. Finally they were replaced by none other than Cell Phones, first slowly they made in-road among well-offs, because initially they were very expensive rather nothing less than around Rs. 25k and their usage limited to only corporate and very senior executives in large industries. If I compare modern instrument to my initial ‘Motorola Flora’ model (at the introduction stage in India) I feel yes, there had been lot of innovative R & D which has changed the complete “Mobile Telephony” scenario. Now even a small child of 6-7 years of age owns a cell phone. Many time it makes me curious as to what use that toddler would be deriving out of that cell-phone which is hanging around the delicate neck of that innocent child who may not know full alphabets at this stage of his life. Then I got a divine revelation that it might be convenient to its mom to locate when the child is misplaced. Now cell phones are no more an aid during emergency but a lifestyle statement. Modern cell phones carry a small computer within it.
