We live in Smartphone era, but
there was some period, peoples depend on phone were only on telephone booth and
payphones fixed at some particular place or office or junction. For many people
in India and abroad these payphones still helps at communication in absence of
mobiles or emergency contact. Before telephones arrive at our homes, we used to
visit the telephone booth or PCO (public call office) to make phone calls; and in
my childhood days I have accompanied many a time my aunt to the red telephone
booth or payphone in our area (Adyar) to make calls to her friends. I really
enjoyed accompanying her not only because it was fun dropping the coin into the
photo box and then dialing the rotary dial, she also get me chocolate or
ice-cream while back home.
Apart telephone booths, sometime
we also visit our neighbor’s house (one or two houses that have telephone
connection then) to make emergency call and also give their number to our
relatives and friends to call in case of anything important. The same thing happens when we
bought telephone, some of our neighbors get calls from their relatives and we
have go and call them at their home… which only then we realized how difficult
we gave to others. Lol
There were also few shops in our area then had telephones, which they also make it as a public phone and collect money for talking. We were also asked to press a red button (an additional device attached to the phone to calculated our talk time) when beeps rise at the end of each minute of the call, like how we drop one rupee coin in the payphone boxes at the end of each minute to continue our talk.
There were also few shops in our area then had telephones, which they also make it as a public phone and collect money for talking. We were also asked to press a red button (an additional device attached to the phone to calculated our talk time) when beeps rise at the end of each minute of the call, like how we drop one rupee coin in the payphone boxes at the end of each minute to continue our talk.
Those days, I guess, we can’t
make STD (subscriber trunk dialing) calls or talk out of our city or town from
the telephone booth or payphones but only visiting the specify shops that has
STD or ISD facilities. Making an STD also means paying more money, so people
don’t make much calls unless important and also put their calls short and sweet
thinking of the high rate. These days we can’t find any of those pretty red
telephone booths, but only the yellow payphones fix to the walls or poles in
public places or in front of the shops and the minimum rate of call to make
allover India is Rs.1 per minute. These payphones are provided by public
telephone sector ‘BSNL’ and the amount received through these boxes are collected
by neither shop owners nor BSNL employees, for which they are paid commission.
Footnote:
The picture above is a coin operated payphone… kept at a
shop in a village called Kuppanur, on the foothills of Yercaud, Salem district
of Tamil Nadu. The yellow phone was catching my attention for photo and it was
the inspiration to write on phones here.
