Technotroubles - Part II

In the sequel to the heart-wrenching tragedy of the phone passing away, let me detail the events of the day..

Started out with waking up at 11 am. How I managed to snore soundly while aforementioned love of life was lying cold next to me, is beyond me. Anyhow, made a futile walk to the mobile shop closest to my place, discovering it to be in shutters-down state, which effectively brought home to me the fact that Sundays have their downsides too.

Decided to get a little more structured. Got home, did an online search of Nokia service centers, located one close enough and set out again. But being the true-blue son-of-the-soil that I am, a Nokia service center was to be the last resort. What would make my day and repair my phone would undoubtedly be the entrepreneurial occupant of a small, shady, 10-feet-by-four-feet gap in the line of shops along Bandra station or some such buzzing place; at one-third the price and taking one-fourth the time of a Nokia service center. What's more, he was more likely to let all the important parts of your phone be left intact, not pilfering them for some gray market smuggling.

Called up a friend (a colleague, whose number is the only number in the world I remember since only the last digit is different from mine) who had visited and benefited from such a shop only a couple of weeks ago and got the name, location and phone number of a Mr Aris, aforementioned kindly entrepreneur.

Such inconspicuous shops and their owners also have the bad habit of disappearing, a Sunday driving the probability of such an event occurring sharply northwards..

But where one disappears, several others spring up. Such is life.

On getting extremely reliable information from an auto rickshaw driver on who around repaired mobile phones, I was directed to a picture-postcard-as-described-above-hole-in-the-wall which at the moment was doing a brisk trade in top-ups and mobile phones-Chinamake. (Oh did I mention that the Nokia Service center at Bandra was no longer operational, so I cannot be entirely blamed for partaking of the services of these enterprising tax evaders).

The benevolent people behind the counter assured me that the job would be done in half an hour upon which I would have to separate with 300 INR of the blood and sweat. The look on my face of disbelieving relief must have been apparent. I thanked myself for living in the holy mecca of the below-the-table-ism and hole-in-the-wall-flourishing-business-ism and went and sat at some nearby Barista, for a long due breaking of fast.

After the promised 30 minutes, I headed back to my saviors, and with great anticipation asked for the phone, relishing the thought of having a link to the world again, so as to assure myself that I had not suddenly died.

Imagine my surprise when I was told that the phone's display was not working (oh by-the-way, what was wrong with the phone was that the switch-on button had come off the board and hence the phone wasn't able to switch on). So they went on about the fact that they had, as promised, installed a new heart (yes, I am not a doctor) but the patient had gone blind and hence appeared to be in all certainty, still dead.

What ensued was not poetry. At least not the John Keats variety. I would advise patrons to not be fooled by my size (by which I mean my height, Bipasha may have called me petite, but it is certainly not because I have a 24 inch waist).

I ended up not paying them and came home, humbled. Sometimes, Mumbai fails to deliver.

This incident marked the end of my efforts at trying to get phone fixed pronto and heralded the beginning of a new phase wherein plans were laid of obtaining a proxy phone for the next few days while this one was sent to the ICU.

Life has a strange way of moralizing. The trouble is, it never practices what it preaches.