Kishore Singh: Mobile mayhem

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The closest you can get to explaining to kids how bad the telephone service used to be is when the connectivity on your mobile packs up. "Hello," you stutter, "can you hear me? Hello?"

The voice crackles, the connection is cut, and you're reminded of those times when you sat by the landline waiting for the trunk call you'd booked an hour ago, knowing you'd spend your allocated three minutes shouting "Can you hear me?" before the operator intervened to say: "Time up."

The cellphone connection is particularly bad in the block of apartments where I stay. At any time of the day "" or night "" you can hear residents rushing around to hold on to the drift of conversations from their balconies, or corridors, or close to windows.

"Can you hear me?" I was screaming into my mobile last evening when my son tapped me on the shoulder: "I think you should take your call from Pandav Nagar," he said, using the code for a section of the house overlooking the garden, "the connection's especially poor in Pratap Nagar." Pratap Nagar and Pandav Nagar are both colonies in the vicinity, but neither is where I stay.

Thanks to Airtel's location monitor, the mobile keeps flashing where you're supposed to be, but it hardly ever gets the script right. Move one step towards the dining room and I'm in Pratap Nagar, a step towards the living room and the monitor flashes Pandav Nagar.

I've become an armchair commuter, so when my wife complains, "We hardly go out any more," I'm happy to tell her that, whether she likes it or not, a satellite somewhere in space has decided that we're in Bhogal.

Given the hot winds blowing through the city, the locations seem be drifting a little more than usual. Since callers who punch in your mobile numbers are prone to politely ask, "Where are you?", I find myself searching for my location on the cell.

"I'm in Rani Bagh," I told a friend who called this morning, "not that I know where that is, but if it helps, only moments ago I was in Lajpat Nagar." "What are you doing there?" asked my friend. "Reading the papers," I said, "and having my cup of morning tea."

"Then why aren't you at home?" he asked suspiciously. "I am," I said, with a confirmatory look around the apartment, "only home seems to have shifted to Rani Bagh, or Lajpat Nagar, though I thought I was better off last evening when it was in Defence Colony."

"Have you," asked my friend, "been drinking?" "Of course not," I protested, "though I'm feeling giddy because, even as we speak, it seems I'm now in Pragati Maidan." "I would like," my friend insisted, "to speak with your wife." "Sure,"I said, "just hang on a moment while I call her from Pandav Nagar, or Pratap Nagar "" or is that Acharya Niketan?"

It gets worse when someone asks for the address. Right up to the apartment number I have no trouble, but after that it's downhill all the way. "It could be India Gate," I try and explain, "or Ring Road, or even Greater Kailash, though once it was Noida."

"Look, it's your address, what do you want me to write?" the irate caller will ask. "It's Pratap Nagar for now," I say "" I get Pratap Nagar a lot "" "but it could be Pandav Nagar in a while, so why don't you call just when you're addressing the envelope, and I'll be able to give you my most current location."

"And where," asked my friend who'd called in the morning, "might you be now?" "Would you believe it," I said excitedly, reading off the mobile phone, "if I said Race Course Road?"