Elite Gratefulness

Elite Gratefulness

A persistent ring of Nokia tune after a brief interval of not over 30 seconds bugged me to hell for over 15 minutes as I sat in an autorickshaw, a mini taxi for short travel on busy Indian roads. All this time I wondered where that bug was, as my Iphone didn't have a clue about any Nokia tune.

Just when I was alighting, I saw the pigmy menace - a Nokia mobile that lay next to me where I sat all the way. It was the evening hours on the Mumbai streets when the streetlights fail to reach beyond the pillars they mount. So there was no way for me to see the device.

Recognise that travelling in an autorickshaw on Mumbai streets during office hours is a very testing experience. You often resort to the option as that is the fastest way to ride a distance of under 3 kilometres. Your car would take anywhere about an hour on some of the stretches. It is an open vehicle with no safety from deafening noise of traffic on the one hand, and road bumps almost every 2 minutes that could push upto a feet above your seat, if you are not holding the vehicle tight - physically or by exerting mental control over your body responses.

Obviously then my sensory organs were completely immune to their neighbourhood.

As the driver had no clue about the last passenger, entering my home campus, I looked into the missed calls, and called the last number.

A teenager girl responded almost with her heart out in the air - before she said anything, I asked her if she lost her mobile. Lost for words, she puts bits and pieces of the story - how her mother who had just landed from Europe took the autorickshaw to get to her home quicker, and in the hurry left behind the mobile. That she was a well known doctor and would be flooded with calls from her patients.

That was so true, as even during the short conversation I had with her there were multiple calls already. Further as I realised the mobile had dual sims - so there were two numbers in operations. When the girl clarified that there were other phone numbers to reach her mother in the public domain, I got her approval to switch off the phone. I offered her the option to either pick the phone from my home later in the evening, or from my office the following day; and further shared my mobile number and address. She preferred to collect the piece from work the next morning.

As a responsible citizen, I made sure that I tucked in the Nokia phone device in my bag in the morning before I left home for work.

It was at lunchtime that I realised I neither received any call, nor anyone visited my office to collect what I was safely keeping as a trustee of a treasure.

So I called the lady, who unapologetically explained that her pet dog had taken ill and that she was busy attending to the poor soul. Yet she assured that her mother would call me on her way back from clinic soon after lunch. There was no overwhelming voice this time, nor a sense of urgency, as I came across to her, and possibly her family as a trusted gentleman who may be given the burden to guard the treasure longer until another emergency.

Recognising the Indian trait of waking up only when an emergency or an urgency arrives on the door, I too brought forth my Indian skills to stay unchallenged.

The bigger drama unfolded when I get a call from a rather lady, polite but vanity riding her vocal sensories. As she asked me to come out of my office campus, in the parking bay; and further, find her chauffeur who was wearing a white uniform next to her Honda Civic. By Indian standards, Honda Civic is a top market elite car.

For a moment my own mobile dropped off my hands; holding my painful nerves, I requested if the same chauffeur attired in white uniform could walk upto my office reception on the ground floor, that was under 20 ft away from where her car was.

I think she got my sharper message, as in less than five minutes my receptionist called to inform that a lady was wanting to see me for her mobile. As I asked her to guide her to my room, I prepared my insightful nerves to read every rhythm of the guest.

It wasnt long as I heard the tip tap toe of a stiletto - and as the sound moved closer inside my room, I could see the tall heeled device bedecked in rich suede playing footsie with the floor, as from her bag to the tie on her hair showed richness outpour her status.

As she sat in the chair that I offered - as courteously and politely as a gentleman I am considered to be - particularly amidst the fairer sex, I handed over her Nokia piece: "Madam, here it is...". By which time, Mademoiselle swapped that from my hands, and was up on her feet.

"Oh, thank you so very much. You have been very kind." were her words before she walked towards the door.

Was I expecting more graceful "Thank you note"? Or did I consider losing Mobile phone a nasty thing to happen? Did I consider getting back a mobile phone a tremendous sense of joy? Or, if the pains I had gone through to recover lost numbers upon losing my own mobile phone in the past was an emphasised state of my being. Or, if the joy of recovering a lost mobile phone was an exclaimed experience.

Yet I am unable to recover from the quick shift of the response - from a state of "Oh, thank God that it landed in rare safer hands!" to "But, wasn't that part of your duty?"