Tring Tring
Welcome back!
This TVC took me back to more than two decades.
Back home,we waited for 4 years to get a telephone connection from the Department of Telecom,the earlier avtar of BSNL. That was 1988.
The story of telephony in India can partly be traced through the phones we have had back home.
I have seen the evolution of telephone instruments in the past two decades from the dial phones to push buttons, from wall hanging to cordless…
Now I feel, reasons for lower telephone bills those days would have been the difficulty to dial(yes,DIAL) and the non availability of the redial option.
So if a number was busy,tap the phone twice and then start dialing again.Arduous task.
This telephone was one of the first electronic(?) equipment I independently operated upon(another one was a cassette player).But this rugged instrument never failed to amuse me.
Even after having a screw or two extra after every open the phone-close it repair cycle,it worked. I was confident that come what may, the DOT was going to replace the phone if it stops working.It was like having something that had a lifetime replacement warranty.
In some 4 years,having a telephone ceased to be a rarity in our area.
“And Hey!Our neighbors don’t have the dialing phones.They have push button phones.!How can this happen?“,I thought.
One fine day,I spotted some ants on the red phone.May be during my repair exercises,one or two crystals of sugar got in.Idea!!,my brother and me made the plot.We opened the telephone and put in some sugar inside and closed it.Yes,we actually did it. Within a day,The phone was full of ants!!!That was a successful attempt in getting a push button phone.Adios the megalithic red monster,we thought!We grinned at our own success.The story of feeding the phone with sugar still remains a secret between my brother and me.
Those were the times not only of dial phones,but manual exchanges.Apparently,calls actually were connected manually.Say A calls B and B is located in another telephone exchange’s area.So A’s telephone exchange manually connected the call to B’s exchange.That itself gives a picture of the number of telephones and the number of exchanges in India then.
Cross talks were common,wrong numbers even more common.My brother and me both have had fun times responding to wrong numbers.Husbands calling wives,girl friends calling boy friends,customers calling banks,police stations all we could answer.Say,I pick up a call, I pass on the call to him and vice versa.We became masters at attending wrong numbers.
STD, was a luxury. One had to ask the DOT to have STD/ISD enabled.
There were STD slabs and variable rates during the day/night.STD rate charts seemed really complicated with rates dependant on the distance (slab) and the time of the day. One could easily get to listen to a lady telling in a nasal tone”All lines in this route are busy,please try after sometime” everytime you tried an STD call. 
This scenario was much better, I was told then by my dad.Trunk calls which existed in the pre STD era were a wait and watch idea where one had to book and wait for the operator’s call.STD,even though expensive,was a sigh of relief.
The rates were expensive.Like most middle class families of those times,we made sure that we called after 8pm or 9pm whatever the peak hours were according to DOT.
Every second mattered when you made an STD call.More focus was on the duration of the call than what was spoken. (Which is unlike what happens today)
We even got a stop watch to accurately check the duration.Some houses had a telephone lock to prevented unauthrorised use of the phone.No, not the computerized number lock(which came later), a physical lock with a key to lock the “dial” or to cover and lock the push buttons.You can’t blame them.Phones were indeed a rare thing.Plus,tapping lines and calling from telephone poles were common.(May be the line man wanted to talk to his chettan in Saudi)
The telephone directory was the database of all respectable people in the town and was the easiest available database of denizens of a town. Mailers came home announcing the launch of a Silk Sari showroom in as far as Coimbatore or a Garden Vareli discount sale in Trivandrum. These things were common during those days.Telemarketing was not born.So the most popular cold calling method was mailing.Citibank,may be the only aggressive foreign bank in India then, used to send mailers on their credit cards.I still remember the cards that said valid in India and Nepal only.
It was common for the phone to be dead.The easiest way to troubleshoot was to short the wires that came into the phone or even try keeping the ends on your tongue. If you get a shock, all’s well in the line. The instrument is faulty.There was no other way to trouble shoot,unless of course you had a parallel phone. And having one without permission was a criminal offense by an archaic act of 1885. Later,like most others we too clandestinely kept a paralell phone.
Even during the push button era,the government offices and the state public library in Trivandrum still had the black bakelite phones.
Telephony in India grew leaps and bounds,thanks to Rajiv Gandhi and Sam Pitroda.The omnipresence of PCOs added fuel to this growth.The sector was thrown open to private players.
A device that is oft forgotten when we talk of our progress in telecom is the pager which was once a hit, albeit for a short time.
Then came the Brick sized cell phones which could easily disguise as a weapon for self defense.
Internet and VOIP happened.
In this day of skype,jaxtr,iPhone and twitter,when a new landline/mobile connection is an hour away, the memories of the dial phone evokes nostalgia.
After atleast 14 phones and 20 years later, I miss that red phone whenever I go back home.How I wish,we still had the good old dial phone at home. Listen to the old ring
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29 comments
The dial phone we got was outrightly hideous.. the previous master had left coffee/tea stains on it and was badly scratched.. it looked like a third hand maruti 800! The next phone we got was equally bad olive green in colour and with a very weak lousy ring tone.. we bought a phone on our after this! =P
Very nostalgic post.. Ours was a black one initially.. Think my dad had it in the 70s. But when we shifted the new owners wanted the phone also with the house n we had to part with that.. Then in the new house we had an olive green dial like you red phone. That served us for many many years.. We changed it only some 3-4 years back when the exchange itself issued a new instument..
Whoa! Finally a story I haven’t heard before!
ya..my thata had a fone like that..was the bomb!
Loved the post absolutely; I had a grey phone and it is still there working fine in my dads office inside the factory. because it is the only thing which can be heard in loud noises of machines. Strong piece of equipment that was….
did ya actually take those snaps of ole ones..wat a foresight..:P
some of those phones were monsters werent they?
@Balu
Rather, I missed. Sorry me 
Unlucky you.
@Dhanya
Oh! U changed the phone? You will miss the antique piece.
@D
For a change
@Raghav
He he,don’t temme u also changed teh fone.
@Prats
Nice reason to keep the old piece
@Jinx
Ya ya, you don’t know me lady
@ACIW
Yups, but I love those monsters.
Those huge dial phones were so cumbersome, I hated them as a kid. And now I wish we had those instead of these ‘modern contraptions’! makes me feel like I am 80 years old!
i had a siemens brick cell phone myself. it was a S3 model. later we bought the S4 model. it was a good 500 gms lighter. imagine, the technical advancement!
Wasn’t it Sam Pitroda(and not Piroda)??
lol STD was dubbed Subscriber Trying and Dying in those days apparently
Thank god! I still have that phone in my junk box. Today,I fixed it up in parallel with my push button phone and it is working perfectly. My phone has 1983 scribbled on it as the year of manufacture.
Thanks a lot for that tring tring
Very nostalgic post! You and your bro must’ve been holy terrors!! :O
I remember our first phone.. we had to hold the receiver and wait for the operator to ask “number please”. Sigh…
And today…
@AP
Oh! I am gonna buy them from ebay.
@Vinni
U had a cell phone as a kid?
@Tony
Corrected,danks.
Ya man, lousy it was.
@vu2swx
I envy u
@MTN
Yes, terrorists to be precise.
Nikhil, Pr3rna is a she. Just thought I’d let you know.
(reference to your guest post on desipundit, b’desh illegal immigrants)
You can delete this comment – it’s just to inform you.
Drifted here from Desipundit… real nostalgic post … those were the days really
How nice to read this and the photos!!
haha somehow miss putting the finger in the tub and dialling.
@Deepti
thanks for visiting. Yes
@sree
Thanks for visiting.
Me too miss those days
Ah yes, we used to have a phone like that black one, which was called the “cheesedish” model.
LOL. I wish someone would take this idea seriously – about sponsors I mean. Cause noone is obviously considering wedding expenditures a waste of good money. So it would do a world of good if sponsors did the money-wasting part, since that is part of their job everyday- Wasting money.
Oh oops I posted the comment in the wrong post. Let me find the right one and put it there now. You can delete this later wont you?
Funny things happen over the phone..remember the time when a thief broke in to ur place and called from the landline on ur cell?
@Steve
Thanks for visiting.
Thats a nice info.
@Ms Cris
Thats okay
Thanks for visiting.
@tenalirama
You have to make public such stories na
Hi! You have really written an emotional story on the telephones!! which was wonderful. Though I’ve not seen such phones where you need to tap it twice, I could imagine the problems. But putting sugar inside the instrument was not so sweet…… Thanks for sharing this post!
@MeghnaK
Thanks for visiting.
You are a kid my dear! Have been to your blog earlier.
Awesome blog. Brought back my old memories. I had got my first phone in 1990. I still remember how my sister and I used to run to pick up the phone.
@Ashish
Thanks for visiting.
I used to do the same with my brother;running to pick the phone.
These days, we look at each other when the land line rings, ….like who is going to pick, him or me…
The Bakelite Telephones are the best! They will still be arround in another 50 years. You cant say that for any of todays telephones.
@BG
Yes, agreed.
Thanks for dropping by.
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