Where have the PCOs gone?

As a kid I used to regularly accompany my father to the nearest PCO (Public Call Office) that was a kilometre away from our home. Through our walk to and from the phone booth, I would endlessly chatter about everything - from how salty the breakfast in the morning was, to becoming a space scientist when I grew up. What days those were!

A few years later, we got a landline phone connection. But it enabled only local calls. So we still walked up to the phone booth for STD calls, infrequently though.

Subsequently, it was time for the advent of cellular phones through which you could anytime call anyone living anywhere on earth (well almost). Thanks to the ever decreasing prices of feature-loaded (overloaded?) mobile phones, we find almost everyone hooked onto to his precious ‘companion’ these days. Moreover, it is so easy to get a SIM card (not so easy in the US). Cellular phones have sure revolutionized the way we communicate. But are the fixed phones dispensable?

Sometime ago, we had gone to Chennai for my visa interview. Since I did not know how much time I would take to be done with the interview, I told my dad "Why don't you show around the place to Mom. I'll call you once the interview is over". What I had not realized was – since mobile phones were prohibited inside the consulate building, I had left my phone with my brother.

My interview got over way faster than I thought. Once I was out of the consulate office, I started to look for a PCO. To my astonishment I could not find any in the vicinity of the Anna Salai street! I walked all over the place for about an hour, asking people if there was a PCO around somewhere. A passerby guided me to a landline phone owned by some restaurant. I eagerly grabbed the handset to dial dad's number. Sadly, it could not call a mobile phone that was on roaming.

My hunt for a PCO continued. I had almost lost my way back when I spotted an Idea mobile phone outlet. The sales person there was kind enough to let me use his mobile phone to make a call. I could not have been more relieved. I dialed the number. All I could hear was "the number you are trying to call is out of coverage area".

I had no other option but wait at the hotel lobby for my parents to return.

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The hotel there had a strange system for using their phones. You couldn’t call a cell phone on roaming from the hotel landline!

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Dhoom Pichak Dhoom by Euphoria
....mera dushman saara zamaana... :D