Good old days.

I was trying to make a call to my mom. But she was not picking up. Tried multiple times but in vain. I got little worried. So, tried our neighbor's phone. After talking I felt relaxed. But, moments later, started thinking. In this era of mobile phones, when I don't event remember my own mobile number, I could recall three of my neighbors' numbers. That made me nostalgic and took me to my childhood memories.

I remembered these numbers because our entire street got their landlines on the same day. Three of us have phone numbers in sequence(34006/07/08). I clearly remember the day when we got these numbers. We had applied for land line for four years. The process of installing wires in our region took weeks. And one fine day, telephone exchanges waale uncle came to each of our house and installed the handsets. We all kids were too excited and so were our parents.

Before this, almost four streets shared one phone. I am talking about long before STDs and PCSs became popular. There was only one house in the entire region which had phone. Each one of us gave that number to our relatives as emergency contact number. That uncle was a retired army person. He used to charge 50 paisa to listen to his phone. Thinking about it now makes me laugh.

Whenever my sister and I visited our relatives' place who had phone, we made calls to our friends when no body could see us. Infact sometimes that was the only reason we visited them.

No need to say that time has changed. Now there are more phones in a home than number of family members. But Those were good old days.