"Number Please”

A Letter I Never Replied...

With everything new that comes to your life, something old is always lost. Only the memories stay with us. Memories of some you let go, some you don’t, and some just don’t go away no matter how hard you try.

-Like those memories of my lonely childhood, where for hours I would gaze through my window looking at those telephone cables running into infinity, and wonder how did voices of so many people talking at the same time went across those thin wires.
How do they know which telephone to enter, or will the voices come out like a stream of water from a hose if I cut them?

-And those dewdrops hanging from the telephone cables, do they hear us talk?

May be some do, like the one that touched my six year old heart.

In a gloomy evening forty five years back, I was alone in our huge house, with my mom and dad at the uncles. The cloud cast sky suddenly became darker and it began to rain. The light bulbs flickered and went off plunging the house into total darkness. With every clap of thunder, streaks of lightening began to crawl up the sky like snakes with hundred heads. The dark silhouette of the tall trees around the house sprang up like monsters every time the sky got lit up by lightening. Scared I began to cry. 

I needed someone to hold and hide behind every time the black monsters of the trees extended their bony hand to touch me.

I do not know why and how we had a telephone then. It rarely rang. May be no one who would talk to us had a telephone then. It just remained sitting there on the brass cradles, black, heavy and silent. There was no rotary dialing disc. You do not dial; you simply pick it up from the cradle and wait for the voice from the other end to come.

In my desperate moment I picked up the phone, wanting to here a voice,  

“Number please”. 

A cold and detached voice of a woman came through the earpiece.But that didn’t matter to me, it was a human voice and I wanted the comfort and reassurance in hearing one.
I sobbed and wailed into the phone- “I am scared.”

There was a silence for a moment before the voice came again. Now it was voice of a woman, a woman who cared.

“Are you alone”?

“Yes, and its dark at home and all these tree monsters are scaring me”.

I cried into the phone.

“Who said you are alone, I am with you, right here. Hold the phone in your hand and bring it closer to your heart, and you will know I am inside it. I will always be here with you. You can talk to me any time you want”.

I sobbed and went on to tell her how scared I was of lightening. She listened to me and then began to tell me how beautiful those streaks of lightening were, how they were like small silly girls trying to show off their dancing skills!

Slowly I forgot I was alone.

As my mom and dad came back I ran to open the door.

Dad later picked up the hanging telephone to put it back on to the cradle.

I never knew who she was; she was just a voice that came through the earpiece. But I began to lift the phone and talk to her frequently. She would immediately recognize me, and was always ready to listen. She became my only friend.

I asked her a lot of things which were puzzles to my young mind.

-"There is no air in water, then how do fishes breathe"?

-"Why all the months do not have same number of days"?

-"How does the moon become bigger and then smaller again"?

-"How do you do this math homework"?

The day dad tried to explain me the earth was round like a huge ball, I cried in frustration of not understanding why we do not fall off from the lower part of this ball.

I cried into the phone.

“Who told you the world is round. Honey, it is the way you make it. Do not ever let anyone else shape the world for you. Remember you are the master of the show. You want it flat, then it is flat, you want it round, so round shall it be.”

She was always there for me.

I grew up and was sent to a boarding school. In the initial days, staying in the hostel I did miss my home, mom and her pampers; but I missed talking to her on the phone the most.

Eight months later when I came home on my vacation I ran to lift the phone and talk to her. The phone now had a rotating dialing disc with holes for each number. No voice now would ask you- 

“Number please.”

I completed my High school in few years to come. It was then one day on my visit to the town I saw a new building standing where the old shack once housed the telephone exchange. Suddenly I felt a sharp pain of loss in my heart. I wanted to know who the voice “Number please” was.

People in the exchange now were new, and had no time to entertain a kid wanting to know about a mysterious person he was talking to five years back. No one knew her, except for the old janitor.

“Maybe you are looking for Pomi, the old grouch. She was a loner, never married and lived alone. She never talked to anyone.”

But she talked to me.

The janitor continued telling me more about Pomi. 

“She later had some mental illness and began to forget things. Thus she had to leave the job.  But she would for many months come here, sit in that corner of the room, gaze into the blank wall where once the control board used to be. Many would hear her talking to herself, saying someone would call asking for her”.

I knew she was waiting for my call. Something was choking me inside, I couldn’t breathe any more.I wanted to see her in person. I had to find her.

“She had a small room rented in some society about a mile from here”.

I found out the house where she lived.The land lady was very receptive to me. She listened to my story and sat there silently for some time.

“Pomi had a sad life”. The land lady began to speak without looking up.

“She never told anything about herself to anyone. But people say she was betrayed by the person she loved and it broke her heart beyond any healing.May be  that is the reason she showered all her love to you, without even knowing who you are and expecting nothing from you. But she knew you will one day come looking for her.

One day she just disappeared, no one knows where she has gone. Before leaving she came to me and gave me something. It was a letter, a letter for you”.

I couldn’t keep sitting any more, I wanted the letter desperately. The lady opened the cabinet and from the bottom of huge stacks of old papers and books handed me an envelope browned by time.I opened and read the letter. 

In those beautifully handwritten words she talked to me again.

My dearest, 

I knew you will find me.

I had to write this letter to you before I lose myself. 
Everything in my life is rapidly getting erased.

You gave me a reason to live. Thank you so much for that.

I know you will do all right in your life. 

Believe in yourself. 

You know you are the master of your show.

By the time you will read this letter I shall be gone.

But please remember, my soul will always be there for you, 

ALWAYS.

With love

Yours

“Number please”

The sky was getting dark as I walked back home. The moon was wafting across a patch of dark cloud. I looked up the sky and a sweet face of an unknown friend was in montage in front of my eyes.

I knew somewhere she is there for me.