Jumbling contacts, losing traction

Because her vendors don’t always take her calls — mostly as, having taken an advance, they find a reason to delay her orders — we’re used to our phones being inveigled by my wife to call them. Having laid such unsuspecting traps, she realises they have probably saved our numbers too, so we are under strict instructions to immediately share any WhatsApp texts we might receive from them with her. Meanwhile, she manages her “personal” phone and her “business” phone to which she has now added a “matrimonial” phone, acquired for the specific purpose of engaging in conversations with families that have children of a marriageable age. 

Things would be okay if she were to confine her contacts to their respective phones, but my wife is neither organised, nor patient, so she uses her personal phone to call business associates, and the so-called matrimonial one to send and receive texts and emails with acquaintances and her several kitty and sorority groups. As a result, confusion prevails because she cannot make out whether the “Joshi” calling her on one of the phones is our friend Bani, or her beads supplier in Jaipur, or the gentleman whose calls she has been avoiding because he wants his son to meet our daughter when such an alliance has been pointedly ruled out by the child.

I was in Mumbai recently when my wife phoned to say that a gentleman would come to call on me to press the suit of his daughter for our son. Reluctantly — for these are usually misadventures — I had a discreet dinner laid out at the hotel where I was staying, and ordered a fine whisky, for all of which my guest was most grateful. But I needn’t have bothered because Umrao Sa’ab turned out to be her client’s driver whose only purpose was to ferry a cheque and see that it was personally delivered to me. Umrao Sa’ab dressed in formal whites and spoke chaste Urdu and it was a little while before the misunderstanding was sorted out. But he was a nice enough chap and for his sake I hope he wasn’t arrested for drunken driving.

When my wife’s email was recently hacked, pleas for help went out to everyone on her list, making no distinction between family and friends on one hand, and potential matrimonial incumbents on the other. She must have scared off several prospective suitors for our children’s hands with her plea for clemency and a few lakh rupees. I should be grateful no one thought to complain to the police for harassment, or embezzlement, in the guise of finding partners for our children. But the kids are heaving a sigh of relief since for the moment it has momentarily slackened her ability to line up “boys” and “girls” for them to meet. 

Juggling her several phones, my wife finds it difficult to take all calls when the phones ring. Those calls she returns usually turn out to be marketers selling insurance products, or car helplines. Meanwhile, irate parents have grumbled about her “snootiness” in failing to return repeated calls. Not only is she missing out on probable mates for our children, she’s also bereft because she ends up missing any neighbourhood gossip while it’s still fresh. And she once had an entire conversation about her best friend Sarla, with whom she’d had a disagreement, with Natasha, her other best friend, only it turned out to be an acquaintance’s acquaintance with a match for our daughter. Sadly for her, the “other” Natasha slammed the phone on my wife.