The Blue telephone

Fiction

It was a warm Sunday afternoon. Pramod was working in the living room at his rather luxuriously comfortable penthouse. He left the television on, though he was working on a pile of official documents that lay in front of him. He would claim that leaving the television on while working would coach him to work under pressure. The trick is not to drown out the TV noise in your head, he says, it’s to learn to live with it.

Pramod’s wife strolled into the living room holding a telephone in her hand. It was a blue translucent telephone. One could see the circuit boards and wires that make the telephone work through the translucent plastic beneath the opaque black buttons. It was the kind of telephone that looks quite interesting at first but it was quite easy to realize that it was not an expensive piece of equipment. She walked up to Pramod and asked, “Honey, Do you remember when we bought this?” Pramod placed the document he was holding back on the table. He sat up, removed his spectacles and fixed his gaze upon the blue phone his wife was holding. Pramod felt a tiny shivering jolt run across his body as he recognized the object, much like the kind that happens when one remembers a close call that could’ve perhaps been a grave accident. Pramod reached out and held the phone, memories of his past rushed through him with a wave of humility as he sat there observing it. Pramod’s wife knew she was in for a story so she sat down on the couch next to him and poured herself a glass of wine and waited for him to string his words together.

“We did not buy this phone” he said, “Do you want to know how I got it?”

“Of course, I would never stop you from telling a story,” Said his wife as she poured him a glass of red.

Pramod reached out for the glass as he began, “It happened when I was 8 years old…”

Pramod had no brothers and sisters. His parents fell in love at college and got married after many years. A few bad loans later Pramod’s father was left on the verge of bankruptcy. They moved to the outskirts of the city and raised Pramod to the best of their abilities. He was sent to a private school which was volumes out of league for someone of their financial cadre. However, Pramod’s father strongly believed that their son had to be educated from the best schools possible. It was not his concern that Pramod needed to complete his education, he believed the correct way to go about it was through imbibing the qualities of self-exploration and inquisitiveness. Pramod’s mother took up a job at a local hospital and his father took up a low paying desk job and would work on his farm growing consumables for the local farmers market every week. It was a happy wholesome family.

One day Pramod rushed home from a long day at school, he was in the 4th grade. He rushed to his father and announced, “They are going to have a school fair day after tomorrow, and can we please go, please! I never get to meet my friends from school outside school because we live so far away, there are going to be game stalls and food stalls and a lucky draw where we could win a refrigerator!”

His father said, “You know the probability of winning at a lucky draw is incredibly low, besides you meet your friends at school every day and you get to play with them in the school grounds.”

“But it’s not the same, and besides my class teacher said she was opening a food stall and she made us promise we would go to the stall and everyone said they would make it. The day after the fair, in class, she will make the students who did not come to the stall stand up and ask them why they couldn’t come.”

“I’ll think about it, you do your homework and be a good boy till day after tomorrow and we’ll see,” said Pramod’s dad.

Pramod knew what that meant, he had heard his father say similar things earlier that didn’t reach fruition. He went back to his room gloomily.

 

It was the end of the month and Pramod’s father was running low on money. He headed to his office on his two stroke scooter. At the end of the day he borrowed a 100 rupees from his colleague and promised him he would pay it back as soon as he is credited with the next month’s salary. He went to his farm in the evening and to his relief the tomatoes were quite ripe and ready to be plucked. He plucked the tomatoes and sold them to the local wholesaler and got 40 rupees for the effort. He went back home after a long day and saw his son at his table drawing some Pokémon characters. He went up to him and said, “Pramod why are you drawing instead of studying?”

“I don’t need to study dad I got 24 and a half out of 25 on the test yesterday. Why do I have to study so much? I study at school. Isn’t that the point of school?”

“Congratulations Pramod, I hope you’re ready to go to the fair tomorrow?”

Pramod jumped and screamed with barely controlled glee, “That’s awesome, I’ll introduce you and mom to all my friends and we can play games and eat and can we please play the raffle? I know you think it’s impossible to win but if we do win we win a refrigerator!”

Pramod’s father agreed.

The next evening Pramod was dressed in his favorite caramel brown T-shirt tucked into a pair of black shorts and the three of them went on the scooter to the school grounds where the fair was organized. It was the first school fair that Pramod had attended, filled with colorful stalls and game counters. He told his dad he wanted to play all the games, however, his dad allowed him to play only two games. They went around all the stalls till Pramod picked out a game where he had to shoot balloons with an air rifle. He was disappointed with his first attempt where he realized that the gun was too heavy for him and the trigger was too hard to squeeze. He gave the organizers quite a scare as he kept examining the loaded rifle and holding it in strange ways to make it possible for him to shoot. His second attempt was quite poor as well owing to the disproportion between his stature and the size of the gun. He quietly stepped back after the clip in the magazine ran out and his dad paid a sum of 80 rupees for both the attempts. As they moved away from the game, they came across his class teacher’s stall, she was selling Channa bhatura (A deep fried Indian dish served with a side of chick peas in a gravy). She recognized Pramod and walked up to him from her seat to greet his parents. The big board in front of her stall read Rs. 40/- per plate.

“Shall I give you 3 plates of Channa bhatura?” she said with a small grin.

“No thank you ma’am,” Pramod’s dad said sheepishly, “Is it possible to get a half plate?”

“No, the coupon will allow me to sell only full plates” she said as she looked at him with judging eyes.

“That’s alright,” said Pramod’s father as he reached into his wallet, “Please give us one full plate then.”

The class teacher pulled out the food from two hot pack containers and served it on a paper plate and gave it to Pramod. Pramod said thanks and ate the whole the whole thing by himself. Pramod’s mother looked at her husband and assured him that she will prepare dinner for the two of them at home.

After eating Pramod walked his parents to the raffle to purchase a ticket. Pramod’s father paid 20 rupees for the ticket and wrote his son’s name and school registration number on it. The official drawing was supposed to be at 9 PM and it was 7 PM presently. Pramod’s mother and father were starting to feel hungry and his mother was still yet to go back home and start cooking. They expected to fill up on food at the fair but they did not expect it to be as expensive as it was. Pramod wanted to stay at the fair to see if he had won but his father told him that it’s almost impossible to win among that many people and took his family back home, much to Pramod’s dismay. He was quite angry with his father that night. As soon as they reached home, he went straight to his room without saying a word to his father or his mother and fell asleep on his bed.

The next morning Pramod hadn’t ended his freeze-out. He was still angry with his father for making them leave early from the school fair. He did not look at his parents directly as he quietly ate his breakfast and caught the school bus and went ahead to school.

At school everyone was talking about the winner of last night’s drawing. It was some kid from 10^th grade. All of Pramod’s classmates were clearly jealous of that kid. The excitement died down quickly as the class teacher entered the room to take the roll call. She sat down in her chair and asked if everyone had fun at the fair. All 50 students in class screamed in unison, “Yes ma’am”. She looked around the class and fixed her gaze on Pramod and asked him to stand up. Pramod saw all his friends looking at him mercifully as he stood up from his seat to face the class teacher.

“Why did you leave the fair early last night?” the class teacher asked Pramod. Pramod felt as though he had rocks in his throat. He wanted to come up with an excuse that would justify everything and lift the weight of the judging eyes that surround him.

“I was feeling a bit feverish, so my father decided it was best for me to go to bed early,” he said as his fear had been realized. He was being questioned by the class teacher as he had feared about his manner of attendance at the school fair.

His class teacher did not believe his lie as she looked at him quietly for a second, “You should’ve stayed till the final drawing, you did not win but you got the second prize,” she said. There were hushed whispers passing around the class room as Pramod’s heart sunk, he wished he was there to collect the prize. They must’ve called out his name a few times and when no one came to collect, they probably drew out another name for second prize, he thought. Pramod’s heart sank as a train of thoughts rushed through his mind. The whisper was rising into a steady murmur, “Silence in the class room!” screamed Pramod’s class teacher, “But don’t worry Pramod, I went up to the stage and collected the prize on your behalf,” she said as she reached into her bag and picked out a gift wrapped box with Pramod’s ticket and name on it. “Congratulations!” she said. Pramod was in quite a bit of shock as he collected the prize and went back to his desk and put it in his bag. He did not open it the entire day. He took it back home and presented it to his dad.

“Look dad, I won second prize and you thought it was impossible to win!” said Pramod to his dad.

“Well, open it and see what it is!” his father said. Pramod neatly opened the gift wrapping and cut open the cardboard box to reveal a shiny blue translucent telephone. Pramod was amazed by it so much that he plugged it into the phone socket to hear it ring. He played with it for a week till the batteries ran out. It was one of those telephones that needed their own batteries to work. Pramod’s dad did not want to spend more money on batteries regularly since their ordinary telephone was one that could work without batteries. The blue telephone has been shelved since then. Pramod’s mother knew that maybe it would bring back some cheerful memories of youth to Pramod someday so she put it away carefully.

“That’s the story of the blue telephone,” Pramod said as he sat back on his couch and sipped his wine. “I guess I always kept it to remind myself of the struggle my parents went through to bring me up. The sacrifices that were made by them were not clear to me at that age. The string of good schools and colleges that I had been to remind me of the countless incidents where my parents felt uncomfortable at social events but they put up with all of it for my sake. The blue telephone is a symbol of humility from my childhood.”