Kishore Singh: Middle-age fantasies

PEOPLE LIKE US

Mornings are newspaper time in our household. No one speaks to anyone, the silence is broken only by cups of green tea being poured out piping hot from the pot into huge, steaming mugs. Phones don't ring, the kids are away, the dog snoozes, the maid goes about her errands silently.

The insistent buzz of a message on the mobile phone, therefore, was an irritating aberration. Probably a PR type reconfirming a meeting, I thought, reaching across to check it. The number was unfamiliar, but the contents explosive. "Scheduling sex with you tonight, Rs 5,000" read the message, "Please confirm." There was no sender's name.

My first instinct was to hide the message, almost as if I were guilty of some infidelity. A moment later, I peeked at the phone again. The contents of the message hadn't changed, but quite clearly it wasn't a wrong number either, because, tantalisingly, it was addressed to me by the abbreviated part of my first name.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't chuffed. The 40s may be the new 30s, but it isn't often you have strangers flirting with you, leave alone propositioning you. Now here was someone willing to bet their money on you too.

Mostly, I'm a conservative kind of bloke who doesn't encourage friends sending naughty jokes to my mobile "" it's irritating when you're at work, besides which the children have access to my phone and I wouldn't like them to think that their old man is also a dirty old man. That they might be exchanging salacious messages with their own friends is another thing I'm not too keen to know about.

But if I'm paranoid about pornographic material on the mobile, it is nothing as compared to the emails that clog up the optic fibres of my computer in the office (fortunately, the machine at home has remained free of suggestive messages). A large number of them recommend enhancement of intimate body parts. Others suggest medicines for failing functions at discount rates "" the more you use it, the cheaper it gets. Open an innocuous message saying "today's rates" and you could find yourself peeping at painted ladies who're willing to talk dirty with you over the phone (ISD rates apply). If I close the door when I log on to my messages, it's only so that colleagues chancing by the monitor don't think I'm the closet sex fiend.

But this was different, someone I/we knew who thought I was worth a tidy sum of cash for more than just editing. I drove to work with a foot pressed further on the accelerator than usual, and was fined Rs 400 by the traffic cops at the foot of the flyover for my troubles. Still, it wasn't a bad day, and if I knew how, I might have whistled at work.

In the office, it's difficult to keep the phone silent, but amidst the barrage of calls and SMSes was the now familiar number again. "Confirming tonight?" asked the message flirtatiously. "Awaiting your response."

But how was I to respond? "Who are you?" seemed altogether too tame. Besides, I was chicken and knew it. Liaisons happened to other people's lives, mine was simply too humdrum. Then, there was simply too much work to be got through. Once again, the message lay ignored.

It was late evening by the time I got home, and I had all but forgotten the naughty come-hithers of the morning when the last message of the day beeped through. "You drive a hard bargain," read the SMS. "For you, special price tonight, Rs 3,000 only." That's when it dawned "" this wasn't anyone propositioning an affair by the side, simply someone soliciting clients over the cell; and I was merely someone who might pay, not get paid. Alas!