Wrong Number

True story.

This happened today at my internship. Somebody called the number in the office room where is also the little table which is the internship workspace and one of the firm's employees picked it up. It was a wrong number which he duly informed the woman on the other side and hung up. Five seconds later the phone rang again. He picked it and hung up immediately to convey to the thick-headed caller that she had called the same number again.

Well, ten seconds later the phone inevitably rang again. Now our man got pissed. Us lowly interns looked over amusingly to see how he'll tackle it. He picked it up, listened and said (this loses some of its charm when translated from Bengali though), "Yes, Madam is in, I'll just call her." Then he kept her on hold phone for about ten seconds.

Finally he picked it up again and said, "I'm sorry, Madam is not here. She's gone out on a date with her boyfriend." Clearly the caller was taken aback because he had to repeat what he said to assure her that she had heard right. "Her mobile number, let's see, its 9836652235."... "Yes, yes that's it. But do not disturb her too much, she's on a private outing."... "My name? I'm Arindam" (he's not) and then he hung up for the woman and let her loose to harangue someone else. It was really a show of brilliant acting since he pulled it off impromptu with a completely straight face. By the end of it we were in splits.

Who knows, maybe the woman got our number the same way we gave her the next one, considering she was so adamant in believing it was the right number. If I were Douglas Adams I could have successfully spun out a theory of how the woman may be trying to call Madam for years now, only to be shunted from number to number, and ending up as the telephonic equivalent of some unsuccessful bounty hunter. Meanwhile, as a sub plot, Madam would be married and having her third kid by next month. But since I'm not and such literary talents are beyond me, I'll leave it here.