The Craze of Changing Mobile Numbers at their own whims and fancies ...

The Craze of Changing Mobile Numbers at their own whims and fancies ...

Yesterday morning there was a telephone call from Aravinthan Narayanan, who was my technical lead in my one of my previous organizations, which is currently no more and is defunct now. The number flashed instead of the name so I was curious on the same. He seemed to be in a kind of hurry and was asking me 'Do you have the number of Sasidharan?'. Sasidharan (aka) Sasi was our the then program manager and currently working with iSoft. Since for a significant time, he hasn't been in my closest circles (including email), my GC chipped in and had reclaimed from immediate use. I had no other way other than to regret unavailability of any contact information pertaining to him. He conceded to the same but added that the number which was flashing was his most correct and recent contact number.

Well! Today being sunday, I just thought I would give a casual call and say 'Hi'. The first call to him was greeted by Airtel telling that the number was beyond the reach of its wings. When I persisted, Airtel did relent and established the connection in the second attempt. Actually, there wasn't any urgency or pertinent tag associated with his yesterday's call. Just like me calling him today, it was again an attempt for a casual communication. However, the tone sounded a little that way. Perhaps, I should thank God for giving me an opportunity to give a good recent example to substantiate and highlight my more recent post on 'Stress Handling Tips'. One of the topics we quickly touched was regarding the mobile number flick that has happened to him that fast. He was telling me that it was unfortunate because of losing his mobile and hence have to forego that number. There are ways in which we can regain the number by having a suitable liaison with the cellular operator. I admit that somethings the call center confuses us but that would save the hassles of reaching the number change message to a lot of friends.

I admit that the process is also tedious. I would like to share an incident on that front too. I remember my other colleague Sengu (aka) Senguttuvan Haridoss too underwent a similar arduous ordeal right at the time of his wedding. It was when we both were in the same old previous organization. He went to the police station in the vicinity to get a Non-Traceability Certificate. He went in the afternoon. He was told that the inspector and writer were unavailable at that point of time. When he visited again in an hour's time, the same old cabbage reply confronted him. In the evening we made a telephone call to the police station and then he went. This time, I accompanied him too. We were shocked to see that there were a good number of people waiting to get similar certificates and the person who needed to sign was sleeping in the room inside. As usual, we had to open up a fifty rupee note [it was 2003 September] to get this process complete and then visit an Airtel outlet to block that SIM and get a duplicate SIM with the same number.

Coming back to the main discussion -- the bottomline of the story is that let us try to ensure number changes are minimized if it can not be avoided. I admit that the number of bureaucratic red tape speed breakers are mammoth and gigantic to a greater extent to bother us. It is upto us to take good care of our assets. When there is a lapse, we would need to pay it with an effort to fill the gap rather than escaping (like by foregoing it etc) and leaving others in the lurch. I am not finger pointing at anyone. At the same time, even in this there is a good moral that we would need to absorb and emulate in our day-to-day life. Assuming it is a business critical number then I admit that as an organization we can have the respective entities like cops and the cellular operators be summoned at our beck and call to get our things done. However, if it so happens on an individual basis a little effort on our side is indeed required to get things move fast and forward.