“Phone No: 9490119XXX. Rs. 1799/- pack expired on 11th October 2024”. Message from AIRTEL company, as received.
The above mobile phone number belonged to my father. This number was originally allotted to father by a government telephone service provider named ‘Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited’ (BSNL). No government agency works. It came as no surprise to us all that this number never worked. It always had connectivity issues. Father had lots of trouble with the BSNL people. In 2017, the BSNL people sent a communication stating that the old SIM card no longer works for 4G. They had asked father to visit the nearest BSNL office at the HUDA complex Tarnaka, Secundrabad for replacement of the SIM. Owing to age and mobility issues of father we tried our best to avoid that visit. It was inescapable. Hence father & I went to get a new SIM that requires Aadhar thumb impression verification.
Further, the BSNL’s billing system was not good. Father used to receive a monthly bill of Rs. 1000/- ! He made no phone calls. The Nokia feature phone was rarely used. And the bill payment was done through bank auto-debit. I argued with father that Rs. 12000/- per annum excluding taxes is a huge amount; it can be reduced to a yearly cost of Rs.2000/-. Secondly, as the BSNL signals are not strong I had advised him to port to a private telephone service provider named AIRTEL. Father worked for the government. He had many apprehensions about a private company like Airtel. I finally convinced him. God only knows how I did.
Now porting this number to Airtel became another big issue for us. The Airtel officials wanted him to visit their office. By 2019, father was already showing serious signs of becoming slow & gradual immobility. Understanding this challenge, I requested the concerned Airtel official to visit father at home for Aadhar related verifications. They were kind and agreed. The porting was successful. We got the new Airtel sim card, and it was working. A new phone was purchased. The pack I made father subscribe was yearly prepaid one costing Rs.1799/-.
The old BSNL sim which remained in the old instrument was also working! In other words, my father had two SIMs from different telecommunication carriers with the same number! Both the connections were perfectly working for almost a month. This impossible situation posed new challenges, headaches and gave rise to many security issues. We made a special appeal in writing to BSNL to disconnect the old SIM! We were fortunate to have it disconnected.
From 2019 onward till father’s demise, he had the same yearly pack. We always renewed the pack well in advance! After his death, my family members took father’s phone number, for bank account closings, for other legal issues & OTP (One Time Password) related matters. After father’s death my siblings renewed the yearly pack in October 2023. Come October 2024, the OTP related works are not completed as there is no urgency felt!
But when I received the above message informing about the expiry of the pack, I felt a stab of pain somewhere deep in heart. An unsettling feeling as if I lost something precious. I was trying to imagine the ease of thought of the world through which the departed ones and their memories are wiped clean in a nano second is beyond comprehension. I still have the message sent by father on my mobile phone on 1st October 2022: “Gopi! Airtel people sent a message. The yearly pack of my number is expiring on 11th Oct. Please do the needful”. The message was followed by a call from father enquiring whether I received the message!
No one will send a message today for the renewal of yearly pack! How much I wish for a similar message and follow-up calls! My father’s voice became silent on 24th March 2023! Now the yearly pack followed him. Both are silent today! Allow me to conclude with the following lines written by Mr. Thomas Gray (1716 – 1771):
“The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth ever gave,
Awaits alike the inevitable hour:
The Paths of Glory lead but to the Grave.”
About the Author
Dr. K. Raja Gopal Reddy is a seasoned internationally qualified Insurance professional. What you are reading here, may not answer all the questions we have, but has the absolute power of asking unsettling questions which increase the interest in the strange world, and show the contradictory wonders lying just below the surface of the commonest things of life. Look at this disturbing but beautiful thought of Friedrich Nietzsche “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him”.
Dr. Reddy can be reached at: raja66gopal@gmail.com