Telephone blues

Published in Dawn Magazine on October 5, 1997

You thought you'd seen everything. Until one day, out of the blue, you got a notice from a magistrate to pay Rs. 35,743 for a telephone that had never been installed in your place. The notice warned you that if you did not comply, the little that you owned would be forfeited and you would be jailed.

Not again, you groaned. It had started two years ago. You had written many times to the telephone men about a bill they were regularly sending you, a bill for a phone which was not then in existence (and which had probably never existed). You had then got a letter from them to pay the bill or face disconnection of all your other phones. In utter frustration, you'd sent a letter to Dawn about the whole thing. It was duly published and, (surprisingly) the telephone chaps had responded. They were sorry about all the trouble they had caused, they said, and they would make sure you were not bothered again.

They might as well have promised you the moon. For the next six months, the Accounts Department regularly threatened you with disconnection if you didn't pay the bill of the non-existent phone. Each time you had to take the newspaper cutting of your letter to Dawn and show it to them. Finally, the notices had ceased, and you had begun to sleep well again. Until you got the notice from the magistrate.

Cursing the day you were born, and wishing your parents had never migrated from that sleepy little down in Kathiawar to this....country, you went to the magistrate's office in the Lines Area (the very name of the place sent shivers down your spine). You showed him the whole file, and the letter to Dawn. He was not convinced, not even when you showed him a letter from the D.E. to the Accounts Department about the mistake. He said the only way to escape fine and punishment was to get the complaint withdrawn. So back you went to the telephone exchange and met the Director. Perhaps it was because you were sick of life itself that you forgot that you were a gentleman and said things you'd never have said when you were normal. Or, perhaps the Director was afraid that Dawn would publish the whole story again and it would be noticed by the men in Islamabad. But this time he dictated a letter to the magistrate immediately and gave you a copy. He even escorted you to the door. You went out, grateful to God for everything. Pakistan? Great country, and if anyone said otherwise, you'd smash his face.