I have two problems with my telephone.
The first one is, my telephone number previously belonged to the State Bank of India. This means at all times of the day (and night) I receive a ridiculous number of calls that are meant for the bank. The callers do not speak English for the most part. The greater number of callers are people speaking in Punjabi, Hindi, Gujarati, or some other similar language.
There is the occasional caller who disbelieves that my phone is now a private number. Others refuse to believe that I cannot speak their native language. In any event, having in number such as I do makes for a very inconvenient life. With the phone ringing at all odd hours, I have learnt to ignore it for the most part.
The second problem is related to the first, or is similar. I usually retire to bed around 9 PM which is Punks’ bedtime. Even though she is 11 years old, she still gets a bedtime story at this time. I usually drop off to sleep, and would awaken very early to study.
For some odd reason people whom I know insist on calling after 9 PM. This despite me asking everyone I know to call me before this time. It is like asking everyone to keep your e-mail address private and s/he still insists on using the “To” field instead of the "BCC" field. Sometimes I cannot believe the idiocy and inconsiderate nature of people.
I realise many years ago that we have become slaves to the telephone. How many people can listen to a telephone and ignore its ringing? Not very many, I can assure you. You could be in the middle of a conversation with someone and his phone rings, and he answers it, sometimes without a by-your-leave.
My telephone is an instrument of convenience in case of emergency. Other than that I prefer to be contacted by e-mail so I can ignore your sorry ass if what you say is not important.
By the way, I do not listen to voice mail either.
