Death in the afternoon

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Truth as has been repeated over a trillion times already is always stranger than fiction. A conversation over my desk phone at work on a hot day in May was just another example. No one could possibly imagine such a scenario and if you had read it in a story, you'd have dismissed it as just another author indulging in his much-abused right to creative freedom ignoring the requirement for a dialogue to sound real.

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It was post lunchtime and I was in the torturous state between much required wakefulness and all-too-tempting sleepiness typical to that period of the work-day when my desk phone rang and I picked up if only to take my mind off the survival challenge it had taken on. A sombre voice over the phone asked for Colleague 1 with whom I share my desk number. I looked around for him and he wasn't in the vicinity. So I asked Colleague 2, a very close friend and flatmate of his if he wanted to talk to the voice on the phone. Colleague 2 came to my desk and after a brief conversation on the phone said to me laying the phone receiver aside "It's from the Nokia Care Centre where Colleague 1 had just given his cell-phone for repair this morning. Guy won't tell me what he wants to convey and insists on speaking to Colleague 1 in person!"

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Both of us were naturally mystified by this secrecy and just the next moment, Colleague 1 entered the quadrant. We hailed him and he came up to the phone. He too talked very briefly before ending the call and he had a look of amusement mixed with wonder when he was done. He turned to us and went "Never had a call like this before! The guy at the service centre said that they were not able to repair the phone. For that they were sorry!"

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The only rational explanation could be that the Nokia Care people, like most of us, were brought on the most typical of Bollywood fare. Remember the innumerable movies in which the worried family/son/brother/sister/boyfriend/girlfriend waits outside the emergency room with the red light indicating that the operation was on, glowing? Then the doctor would come out, all serious and grim and the person/persons outside would rush to his side with a questioning look on their faces and we as the audience would already know what he was about to say, essentially "I am extremely sorry. I tried my best!" So it was with such appropriate gravity, that the death of a cell-phone was announced.