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smartened up its act. Both 17 and
18 have been computerized. You get the satisfaction
of speaking to a polite operator or an automated system,
either of which will take down your complaint and give
you a complaint number.
I was actually thrilled to call
up and ask for the number of my favourite bookstore.
The operator asked me to spell the name five tomes,
at which point I nearly gave up, but then to my surprise,
he said "ek minute", pressed a button, and
a computer read out a correct number in an intriguing,
sultry Chinese woman's voice. Oh joy! Pakistan has finally
emerged on the scene as a major player in the telecom
industry.
Since those early, heady days,
we have been bombarded with more and more phone-related
advances, fax machines, the Internet, mobile phones
(each one with its attractions and frustrations which
warrant another article). But my absolute favourite
innovation in the whole world has got to be the Caller
ID, known locally as CLI. This may not seem like a big
deal to those of you who live overseas, but it is almost
revolutionary for us in Pakistan where the national
male past time is calling up a random woman and asking
if she will "make friendship with me.
Pakistani woman have been bombarded
with obnoxious, harassing phone calls since the dawn
of time. I suspect everyone from the President down
to the local jamadar has done this at least once in
his life. Sometimes they just want to breathe heavily,
sometimes they pretend they have got the wrong number
(so cleverly mixing up the digits of your phone number
to seem genuine), and often, when asked sternly who
they want to speak to, will reply in their most seductive
whisper, "Aap sey".
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