Antique system

This one is for Bela Bose. Now that you have found a better person to spend your life with, but that pest Anjan Dutta still keeps calling you to announce his pathetic new job and to repeat his marriage proposal, have you thought about disconnecting your phone line? After all, you won’t be living at this number much longer. Your new husband has also generously agreed to let your mother move in with you. So she does not need the phone connection either. And, in any case, you now have a brand new (baby pink) mobile phone to love and care for.

If you decide to give up your BSNL line, this is the drill you will have to follow. I speak from experience. Even though there is no Anjan Dutta in my life, I too have been (for other, sadder, reasons) trying to get my land line disconnected. So here is a list of things you must do. And also a list of the things you must definitely NOT do.

First, if you live in south Calcutta, do not foolishly think that a letter requesting disconnection, together with some proof of identity and copies of some paid bills, will be graciously accepted and acknowledged by your Ballygunge Place BSNL centre. That is only a bill payment centre, for heaven’s sake. Don’t waste the staff’s time there with your ignorant attempts to hand over your letter. As they will tell you, you need to go to the BSNL office on Raja Basanta Roy Road.

But please don’t actually make your way to Raja Basanta Roy Road. Because, once you get there, an impatient official will scold you for your folly. Don’t you know that all phone cancellation requests require a form to be filled in and that the form is to be obtained from 8 Bentinck Street (henceforth, 8 B.S.)? Send someone (of course you have an underling to spend the four hours that this form-seeking trip will involve) there to get you the form that your mother (in whose name the phone is registered) will need to sign. There is also other paperwork needed with the form, so don’t even think that you can accomplish all this through a single trip yourself.

You don’t have an underling, but you have a kind neighbour who works in north Calcutta and offers to get you the form. When it arrives, you look at it in mounting horror. You need to attach the duly filled form to copies of the last three most recent bills paid — if you are as inefficient as I am, there is no way you will find the third last bill. You also need to attach a copy of the original application and registration for a phone connection. That happened a quarter-century ago? Well then, if your mother did not have an efficient filing system in those days, you will just have to forego the refund of her deposit. You are too excited about your impending wedding and too impatient to get Anjan out of your life to care about the refund. But that is still not the end of the matter. Your mother’s signature on the form will now have to be attested by a gazetted officer.

After a week, all this is done. By which time a new bill has arrived that must be paid before you can submit your request. This takes care of the missing third last bill, but it adds a thousand rupees to the refund you have lost. Never mind. Now take a day off from work to go to 8 B.S.

And do not try to outsmart the system. Don’t believe the colleague who tells you that there is a BSNL centre on Hungerford Street that will accept your disconnection application. Even if, by now, you are also worried because your mother’s pen ran out of ink in the middle of signing the form, so that you have two signatures on it — one scratchy and incomplete and the other normal. You fear that the official in charge of your case will throw the form back at you. Maybe you can at least get another form at Hungerford Street. Maybe you won’t even need another form, because a kind person there will accept your shoddy application.

So off you go to Customer Care at Hungerford Street. A lovely office, clean, computerized, empty. But not empty enough for the faces at the customer care windows to turn immediately to you. Shouldn’t they finish their tea first? When you finally catch someone’s attention, he laughs in your face — a warm tea-ey laugh — for expecting him to take your application. Hasn’t anyone told you that this only happens at 8 B.S.? If you then meekly ask for a duplicate application form at least, he directs you to this same 8 B.S. Do not suddenly try to assert yourself by wondering loudly what use all this computerization is if one cannot even download an online form. As your interviewer will primly ask you, when did computers begin to do everything for you? Can a computer make a vegetable curry? The faces at the other windows will cackle like hyenas at this sudden display of wit, but you can restore their blank stares very quickly with an equally funny retort (“why does the computer need to cook? Do telephones eat vegetable curry?”) or even funnier ones that occur to you gradually — as Ogden Nash observed, repartee is what one thinks of when one is a departee.

However, at this point, a helpful soul will materialize from a cabin, disturbed by the commotion you have caused. He will nicely explain to you that these forms are kept only at 8 B.S. so that when you go to collect them you will get a chance to explain why you want to give up your connection and they will get a chance to explain why that is such a bad idea. He also has some secret information that will save you a third visit to 8 B.S. If you go in advance to 3A Auckland Place and surrender your phone instrument there, get a receipt, and hand over a xerox of this receipt together with your disconnection application, you won’t have to discover the instrument return rule only after you submit your application.

You thank him from the bottom of your heart, go home for lunch and a nap (you might as well — the casual leave has been taken anyway), and then head to Auckland Place with your instrument. Only to have them ask which planet you are coming from. Who told you to bring in the telephone without a written order from the head office; that is, from 8 B.S.? How can they give you a receipt with only your word for it? And anyway, the instrument in your hand is not a BSNL issue one. They never supply customers with this expensive thing you have brought with you. You will have to find and return the basic black piece you must have received when your application for a phone was approved. It is no use protesting that that obsolete piece was changed for you ages ago by a BSNL worker who came to attend to your complaint about a non-working phone. Also, do not disclose that this supposedly fancy instrument has never worked either and that you have been using your personally bought cordless.

By now, you may wish to scream. Instead, accept the kind suggestion that you leave right away for 8 B.S. so that you do not lose another day of precious leave. As you turn to go, do however ask what time the counters at 8 B.S. shut for the day. You will learn that this happens at 4 pm. And you will look up at the clock on the wall opposite you and see that it is now 3.50 pm. Remember your manners and thank them as you exit.

Go home, calm down with a cup of fragrant Darjeeling and use the sudden free time to look through old files just in case that original application and registration emerges. Who knows, you might be able to claim that refund after all. Even if you don’t, I promise that you will discover some gems in the mass of BSNL/Calcutta Telephones papers. These will include a neatly printed notice from some years ago informing you that your line has been disconnected due to non-payment of bills to the tune of Rupees 00.00 (this is not a typo). You will have even more fun when you discover subsequent correspondence between Calcutta Telephones and a family assistant (from the days in which such persons existed) in which the latter explains that he has proof of all payments being up to date and so may the line be restored forthwith please? To which there is a response that the disconnection is because there is digging work going on in your area. At which information, the said assistant demands a rebate for the X number of days that your family has been without a phone connection. As you organize the papers chronologically, you will see that the correspondence on this particular matter is quite drawn out.

But, alas, there will be no sign of the registration number.

From here on, you are on your own, Bela. I don’t know how this story ends. But when you do eventually have a disconnected phone service, and maybe (or maybe not) a refund, and when Anjan can no longer reach you, please tell me how you got to that sweet place. You owe it to me. Above all, I need to know if 8 B.S. exists!