Acouple of decades ago, when I was a school student in Shimla, we had to walk nearly two kilometers to the Central Telegraph Office in case we were to make a trunk call, in other words, a “long distance call” from one town to another town/ city.

    There were three options to make a trunk call, viz., General Call, Urgent Call and Lightning call. The first one was most commonly used if there was no urgency/ emergency and the call would “mature” in about one to two hours. In case of urgent call, your waiting period would be about half an hour. And, in case of an emergency like some death or serious ailment or a cheerful news of a child, etc., the ultimate choice was to book a lightning call which you could expect to get through in less than five minutes and it would cost a fortune to make that kind of call.

   The international call was not affordable to a common middle class person. As soon as a....