I love reading and watching suspense thrillers, but never expected one to unfold in my life. A few months ago, as I was sedately typing away on the keyboard – another wannabe article – my cell phone made a delicate birdie sound interrupting my chain of thoughts. I had forgotten to mute it. I saw that it was an sms from an unknown number. I donned the hat of the curious cat and opened it. It read, “Please call this number”. I ignored it and went on hitting the keyboard. Around fifteen minutes later another one followed, “My ba Tabu, call karo”. I noticed that the number from which the sms was sent and the number given to call were different.
Why would the famous Tabu want me to call her? Her frame came to my mind initially as I could not recollect any other person by that name. I gave it the ignore treatment again and went about my evening work. Late evening as I was deep in pranayama the sms sound made me jump out of my skin and it was the same
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mysterious sender. The message was now desperate, “Call karo ba, my Tabu, please karo.” Suddenly it flashed to me that a no-longer-in-touch school mate had a daughter by the same name. Could it be her, I wondered, feeling slightly uneasy but concerned at the same time.
But it was beyond my comprehension as to how she had got my number and I went back to my deep breathing. Much later I observed some new messages on whatsapp, from a new number. The messages started with “assalamualaikum” greeting and conveyed that it was Tabu’s pal Sabira and that she wanted to speak to me and that it was very important. I chewed on it, and my conscience bade me to find out who the person was, and if connected with my no-longer-in-touch schoolmate. Firstly I simply wrote back saying that she had the wrong number. Pat
came the reply asking how I could be so rude as Tabu had sent her my number.
Perplexed, I shot back,”Who do you think I am?”. She replied, “Her friend Imran”. Oh God, name apart, gender and religion way off the mark! I gasped silently and wrote back that the whole communication was a mystery to me and requested her
to stop it.
That did not stop the gritty girl and she insisted that she was a girl (wonder why she needed to clarify?) and that her pal Tabu wanted to know what I had spoken to her husband. This was getting murky and I played the final shot. I asked her if she could divulge some details about herself. She asked me to wait and lo, sent a photo
of three girls and thankfully nobody resembled my no-longer-in-touch schoolmate’s daughter. I felt sort of stupidly relieved. The picture was quickly erased by the enterprising girl, and she begged for my trust, entreating me to tell her of the conversation with her pal’s husband. I blocked the contact having been unable to convince the girl. I hope all ended well for her with the right number. A novel drama indeed amidst the novel coronavirus times!
