A Phoney?? Affair

It’s been more than a month now that I have been in Hyderabad. Thanks to CG- BoreEl I have finally been able to stay in my hometown for more than a month at a stretch after 5 long years.

Well my stay in Hyderabad has been awesome. It’s like i was back in my childhood. Mom n dad are there to take care of all the issues that arise. No running around and yeah loads n loads of fun. Now I know half of u would have begun to wonder then what is that I am gonna put up. Not that I really write about something that’s going alright in my life.

Well I am not gonna disappoint you people. This is a story about how one can screw up a simple task (that’s the only time you’ll hear that word from my mouth in this context) of getting a mobile connection.

Being the “phonatic” that I am, the first thing I palnned to do as soon as I got here was to get a mobile connection. Now, that was easy. My bro works for HSBC and Hutch has great offers for HSBC employees. Free calling here, there, everywhere. There was just one little catch. I would be going back soon and my brother would go back to Cal and there would be no one to get the connection disconnected once I am done here.

So now I had two choices either join HSBC and stay here permanently and at the same time flush four years of my ENC engineering down the drain or get someone else from HSBC to get me that connection. Naturally, the second choice looked simpler and I opted for it (but now that I think of it getting into HSBC would have been easier). In comes Ms. X, my brothers colleague who agreed to put me out my misery and get me a connection.

2 days later.. Voila!! I had a no. that worked. The world seemed like a bed of roses. I never knew calling could be so cheap (being on postpaid all my cellular life) . And the calls began to flow.

I rarely received calls from unknown numbers so I was pleasantly surprised when somebody my mobile didn’t know called me up. I picked up and to my disappointment it was not a long lost friend but someone from hutch calling for verification. Didn’t they do that earlier at by going to Ms. X’s place? Anyways I just wanted to get over with it. So the usual questions flowed in. Your name? Ms. X’s full name, her address, and finally how on earth did I know her? Well I said I am her friend and I still repent that one split second when my tongue didn’t slip and say relative.

Anyways the guy on the other end seemed satisfied and welcomed me to the Hutch family (whoever came up with that).

And what do you know the very evening I was unceremoniously dumped from the family I was welcomed to in the afternoon. Apparently the verification hadn’t gone the way they wanted it and they thought that I was a phoney (I agree I am but of the other kind- the kind that can’t live without a phone).

Anyways so started my frantic efforts to get my connection back. But 3 days later it came through that nothing could be done. I had irreparably damaged my chances of getting the same no. So I went about the entire procedure of getting a number again through Ms. X of course. Even after my previous experience the offers had me hooked. And well what I didn’t realize that I would have to shell out 1000 bucks to get the previous connection disconnected.

Well all said n done and 1000 bucks lighter I waited patiently for my connection. A day passed, then another and then another. I couldn’t take it. I called hutch care every half hour and got the same reply. “Your number would get activated immediately sir”. Finaaly 7 days after being phoneless I had my phone activated. And touch wood I am still mobile.
Hope it stays this way and I can keep in touch through Hutch with all you lovely people reading this.

PS: All hutch employees reading this. Please do not hunt me down and disconnect my phone. This “Phoney” does need more than his share of talk time.