THE TELEGRAM

It was quite late in the night when I was about to call it a day ! Having identified the murderer in yet another Perry Mason’s novel, I was rather elated about my intellect. I was all alone at home. It was raining cats and dogs outside …I yawned and stretched myself and our cute pussy cat and its cuddly kittens almost imitated my actions when someone knocked at the front door. Surely it couldn't be Paul Drake ! I was rather fantasizing myself in Perry Mason’s role without any Della Street around ! The knocking persisted directly proportional to the level of my curiosity. “Who could it be at this odd hour?” I said to myself trying to gauge the situation. Exercising the safety first approach I peeped from the window and saw a stranger. The stranger announced he was a postman and wants to deliver a telegram. I bravely opened the door and permitted the completely soaked postman to come in. He promptly produced a paper and demanded for my signature. I refused to use the Postman’s pen and proudly picked my very own cherished Parker  pen. I signed the acknowledgement and received the telegram. There was still some of Perry Mason’s hangover and I was in the mood of giving a $ 10 bill to poor old man who was doing his duty religiously, even in this weather at that unearthly hour. However, as soon as the signing ceremony was completed the postman vanished into thin air, to his next destination,  I presumed . I was rather touched… Just then the touch of cat and kittens rubbing against my legs brought me back to reality. I then opened the telegram but alas, before I could read through it there was power failure!

I sat in the darkness hoping that better luck would prevail. When nothing of this sort happened I started thinking of a solution seriously. The only way to know what was in the telegram was to read it….. which meant I must overcome the darkness which was the root cause of my inability to peruse. This meant that I had to find a match box and a candle (the immediate solution to combating a power failure in those days). Even in those moments of great worry, I patted myself for my ability to think logically and launched the search, for the two most critical items in absolute darkness . The task seemed Herculean yet was not impossible thanks to our habit of placing a match box and candle at several strategic locations in our house. My gratitude extended to the Electricity Departments’ regularity in power cuts in our city as well as the wisdom of my wife who was away. After banging my forehead and elbow against some protruding invisible objects, I managed to reach what seemed like treasure at that point of time – the match box and candle. Without wasting any precious time, I lit the candle which illuminated the room…and I  discovered that during the search operation, I have misplaced the telegram . It was rather frustrating if not disgusting as I must admit that this was not the first time I had misplaced any important paper.

Needless to say I get extremely annoyed…..when such things happen …and off late they are happening too frequently…..In such situations, I normally take a deep breath and calmly recollect all my actions and store them in my memory. Resorting to this technique, I now took a deep breath… I knew from experience that items lost out of the blue can be retrieved if one rewinds one’s memory for all of one’s recent actions, in and replays them.. The ‘action replay’ started and I began moving in the illuminated room traversing the same path that I had taken earlier, in the darkness. In this process I allowed my forehead and elbow to bang for a second time. The cats were merely watching the long shadows without giving any importance to the situation. If they were dogs instead, they would have surely barked the whole house down and would have increased the confusion, believing they were helping their master. The time was trickling……I was rather becoming nervous when lo behold my “rewinding and replaying” theory worked! yet again ! I was beaming with the telegram in my injured hand. Meanwhile, a cool breeze did its job and I found myself once again in the dark - about 12 feet away from the place where I had  installed  the candle . Anticipating such natural calamities, I had cautiously kept the match box in my pocket hence I could easily reach up to the candle, without any additional planned or unplanned collisions! At last I was in a position to read the telegram.

It hardly took a second or two to read through the message but on completion of this the suspense and confusion were  raised to new heights. All that was written in the telegram was number “FIVE” and my wife’s name. I could not make head nor tail from this cryptic message.The need of the hour demanded careful analysis of the situation. I decided to apply my brain at its best and asked a couple of “Whys”

• Why should my wife send me such an absurd telegram?

• Why did the postman deliver it in the night, even though it was raining?

These two “Whys” did not help. The general characteristic of any telegram is that it contains 4 or 5 words of which at least one is miss spelled, one is illegible and the remaining are confusing. Rarely, is any telegram legible and the only time you find it legible is when the message is delivered late, after its relevance is lost . I gave some more inputs to my brain from my bitter memories …they did not help either, as the telegram I read had only two words. I started thinking hard .The words “number “5 had become a mystery and I decided to drive to city telegraph office in order to get the message decoded.

The power supply was restored and our two helping neighbors inquired with straight and serious faces about the telegram. I had nothing to hide from them so I simply produced that mysterious piece of paper. There were some collective and individual attempts to decode the puzzle .Finally, everyone advised me to go to city telegraph office. Needless to say, I appreciated my own quick decision making capability!

Before starting , I quickly gathered things like the car keys, my wallet, the torch, my raincoat etc. One of the neighbors inquired how come I had a raincoat in this city but I left him to guess about it, as I was in hurry. I started my car which to my surprise fortunately posed no problems. They say “Luck always favors brave!” I started driving through flooded waters which were actually roads……and at some difficult spots I thought I was driving through an ocean ….Relentlessly, I proceeded in first gear almost standing on the throttle control and heaved a sigh of relief, when the water level reduced. I thanked God for not getting stuck .when I reached the city telegraph office it had a deserted look and in a remote corner, two clerks were snoozing away to glory. I did not disturb their blissful dreams. I went forward and observed that  the huge board was  displaying all the telegraphic codes in darkness, all the other lights were merrily glowing. I once again patted myself for carrying a torch with me….switched it “ON“ and started scanning messages. The mystery of the elusive “number five” was solved when I saw          “MANY HAPPY RETURNS OF THE DAY” against this code. All my tension got washed away and suddenly I did not know what to do…… Something that sounded like Ah! or Oh emitted from my vocal chords..Then I scratched my head thinking about the day and I realized that exactly fifteen years ago, I was married on this same date. ..It was a pleasant discovery!!!….. I was moved! I was rather lost, when a stray cat almost touched me…perhaps wanting to assure me that I was not all alone.

While I was returning home, driving on a clean and empty road, a chilled wind was blowing as if to remind me time and again, that I was missing my dear wife on that special day!

---- R J Phansalkar

Jan 12,1996

2085 sector 9 .Faridabad .121006