Hello?? New Delhi Railway Station?

Yeah, stuff like this forms an intergral part of working for a newspaper....answering the telephone and tackling numerous such inane queries. Just recently, I took a call from a gentleman who wanted to donate money for the Pakistani earthquake victims, this is how it went:

Man: Hello? Madam, haan, hello?? Yeh Pakistani earthquake victims ke liye paise kaise donate kar sakte hain?

Me: (quite irritated, coz his call was terribly ill-timed as we were fast nearing the deadline) Sir, pehle Jammu & Kashmir ke liye to paise de do...

Man: (absolutely flying past my smart alec reply) Plz mujhe bataiye ki Pakistani earthquake victims ki madad kaise kar sakte hain

Me: (now pissed beyond belief) Sir, I dont' know

Man: (obviously not the one to give up) You are such a huge newspaper and you don't know?!

Me: Yes, I don't know and don't care. First check if they have a fund created for the purpose coz for all you know, they might not even need your money!

And exulting over my victory, I slammed the phone down (I vaguely remember having read somewhere that you should quit while you're ahead...)
I think for all our hard work that reflects in our bright and beautiful edition every morning, people seriously mistake us for May I Help You? set. No, why else would they call with such utterly moronic questions???
Actually, I think our PR people screwed big time somewhere. No, really. During rakhi time this year, a lady called up from Montreal. Her humble request was that we tell her if her rakhi had reached her bhaiyya. What the....???????
Sadly, we'd never know if her bhaiyya received her rakhi or not.
The thing is that they don't always irritate us. They give us-poor overworked underpaid journalists-a lot of, and I really mean a lot of reasons to laugh!
On another thing that I've realised in these phone calls is that Indian janta, for all its innocence, is amazingly media-savvy.
Just a few weeks back, this man called up. He wanted us to do a story on his son, who had successfully recovered from dengue. Foolish me, I didn't see the point and told him so, which must have put him off very badly coz he yelled: ''Maine ded lakh rupe kharche apne bete par, isko Apollo le kar gaya tha. Woh sab kis liye?'' Beats me, boss! Maybe for a story. In any case, I'm not obliging you...
But what took the cake was this:

Caller: Hello? Madam, ek bahut important baat batani hai.

Me: (combat ready with a pen and paper) Haan ji, bataiye?

Caller: Madam, mere paas ek anonymous e-mail aaya hai, usme likha hai ki Osama Bin Laden ko America mein World Trade Centre bomb karne ka idea kaise aaya. Mail mere hotmail account par hai.

While I was still racking my brains over my possible reply, he added: Aur mere paas pictures bhi hai. Plz ma'am, jaldi kucch kijiye....

I did. I hung up on him.