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HONESTY STILL EXISTS

 

HONESTY STILL EXISTS

 

LT COL NOEL ELLIS

03/I/2024

 

The New year started with a bang when my wife received a phone call from an unknown number. The caller claimed that her number was part of a WhatsApp group which he had accessed as he found a phone lying somewhere.

The man spoke in chaste Punjabi. Due to distortion in the voice, it was not clear what were they trying to explain. I tried my hands in Punjabi with them. Somehow, the location where they had found it was not decipherable due to the noise in the background.

He kept insisting if we could contact the owner and they would be happy to hand it over. Then the call got disconnected.

The first thing that came to my mind that it could be a fraud or a prank or even a scammer trying to gain access to the WhatsApp group. These days people join groups and create havoc by chatting or extracting information or even cleaning bank accounts within minutes.

Once the call ended, I looked up my contacts, if this number was common. It belonged to a very known person. A thought passed my mind, that could he have genuinely dropped it? That’s what those guys were trying to say. In the mean time, my wife got into action and posted a lost and found message on another common group but got no response.

This added more suspicion in our minds. One cannot take such things for granted. The number of frauds and phishing scams happening today are a matter of concern. These days we tend to save passwords etc. Such information could have been misused also.

Somehow my mind wasn’t at peace, till I called up the person on his alternate number which I had.

I too had ‘lost’ my phone today. I had to visit an ‘e- mitra’ for re-submitting my life certificate. I am alive and in constant communication with the bank staff, but they do not consider me alive till some information mismatch in their records is sorted out.

I was half way home on my ‘Bullet’ when I realised my phone was missing. I had stopped to take some pictures of birds and eight feet high cobwebs enroute. That was the only place I could have dropped it. A phone lying on the roadside is a big attraction. I retraced my path but could not find my phone.

My mind kept working on “what next”. How to block the number? Will I get the same phone number back as it is linked to everything connected with me? Will I have to lodge a Police complaint? Days it will take for a new SIM to be re-activated? Do I inform my bank now? In my thoughts I reached the e-mitra. I had left my phone there and I breathed a sigh of relief.

With my episode weighing heavily on my mind, where I was lucky, I was wondering about the fate of the other person. The agony he must be going through besides the discomfort and tension while trying to locate his lost phone.

My wife showed me a picture sent by the person who had retrieved the phone. The screen was totally shattered as if someone had deliberately tried to destroy it. This raised more suspicion in our minds about the intentions of this caller. Things are not good these days.

Finally, I couldn’t hold myself. I called up my senior’s alternate number. I breathed a sigh of relief when he said that he had recovered his phones.

He had dropped both his phones from his car. How? is a mystery. While he had recovered one after sometime, which another passerby had found and came up to his location to hand it over in about 15 minutes. They however couldn’t locate the second one, even after repeated calls. That phone appeared to have been run over by another car and thus the terrible state it was in.

That person could not make calls from the shattered phone so he took out the sim and inserted it in his phone to call numbers which were showing. That’s how we got a call. Now one could link all loose ends.

People do understand the loss of a phone. It was commendable that those guys tried to call whomsoever they could.

Even the e Mitra fellow replied to a call on my behalf and told him that I had forgotten my phone at his shop. That person informed my wife about the incident just to confirm that the phone was in safe hands. It was ‘all is well that ends well’.

Honesty still exists. That is how we all should be. However, it is better to be safe than sorry. Isn’t it? I wonder!!!!!!!

 

JAI HIND

© ® NOEL ELLIS

WISH YOU ALL A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR 






 

 

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