A Simple way of Barring NSD

My late grandmother was a telephone addict. She used to get up at 4.00 am in the morning and start her long distance calls by 5.00 in order to avail the discounted early morning rates. Though she used to keep her speech low, so as not to disturb me, I used to wake up hearing her murmurs into the phone. Finally I figured out a way to dissuade her. I would pull out the cord before going to bed and would plug it back only after I got up. If the phone goes dead the tension was palpable as she used to feel like out of oxygen.

As age got up with my mother, she too started showing signs of her mother’s genes. One day when I visited her she was irritated as the phone was out of order for a couple of days and about the same time her cellular phone also had konged out. On my way back I stopped at my brother's petrol station to register the complaint on 198. When I keyed in the phone number - 272460, the answering machine stated that there's no telephone corresponding to the number. However much I tried the response was the same. I accepted defeat and proceeded to register the complaint in writing including the frivolous response of the answering machine.

Couple of days passed and still the complaint was not rectified. I talked to my brother about not being able to register the complaint from the phone at the petrol station. To my amazement he revealed that in order to mislead freeloaders he had switched the dialling buttons zero and star. All NSD / ISD codes start with zero. So when I thought I was dialling 272460 in effect I was dialling 27246*. No wonder the system couldn't recognize the phone number and kept repeating, "There is no phone corresponding to the number you dialled".

I couldn't but admire my brother's indigenous and simple NSD/ISD barring technique