PP

While browsing the net I landed here and got to read the post titled PP which instantly brought a smile on my lips.

During pre PCO days pp i.e.neighbour's phone  (PADOSI KA PHONE) was the source of many good/bad news from relatives and friends . I don’t remember any phone -owner getting disturbed or feeling  irritated when he had to call his neighbours to receive their phone calls. But those were the days when we had the neighbours in the true sense of the word.

Now let me tell the reason to smile:
During mid 80ies, we lived in Pauri Garhwal. The place we lived at was away from the city.We had to climb down quite a distance to reach the school and then climb up the same distance to get back to the ‘Officers' Colony’ which had only five houses. There was one more house which belonged to an Engineer of Jal sansthaan (‘waterworks’).

In those five houses, for a few months,only we had a Phone. Our engineer friend got this facility later but for some time Srivastava uncle had to depend on our phone for his official calls, which were quite frequent as the nature of his job required it. To call him we had to walk down quite a bit. So we had a‘who will go’ look on our faces whenever he got a call. Still it was fine with us.

One winter afternoon we were startled by a sound of a pebble hitting our tin roof. We came out to check who did it!! We looked up(the motor road) and saw our very jovial Shah uncle who was the SP (suptd.of Police) ,a busy person. He said (loudly) that he was passing by and just wanted to say hello but didn’t have the time to climb down (to reach our house).

After that day we just had to throw a pebble on the tin roof of the person we had to call.

Anyone who heard or saw us doing that had a good laugh.