Travelove Series 9 – The Wizard of Awes
Travelove Series is about the smiles and experiences I have gathered during my travels. And, I am an active seeker of Travelove.
The compulsion to stay indoors and forced social distancing are norms brought into our lives by the COVID-19 pandemic. This new normal has changed how we interact. Cultural conventions like hugging or shaking hands have vanished. New acronyms like WFH (work-from-home) have entered everyday parlance. Little wonder, today, the need to stay connected is higher than ever before.
It is a freak chance I moved my home base from Gurgaon to Mumbai just a few days before the lockdown. My home was not getting the signal of my network operator. I was at the mercy of the broadband service provider, with no connectivity if there was an internet service outage.
A Search for a Solution
This situation forced me to look for an alternative. Going too far away to look for a new mobile sim was not an option, for there was no certainty the network operator stores will be open. This desperation galvanised me to make tentative enquiries for a new sim.
A friendly neighbourhood daily-needs store pointed me towards an unusual roadside hawker, a hawker of sim cards. He had set up his 2 ½ x 4 ft folding table, rustled up from discarded wooden crates, at the street corner. With a white-and-red branded tarpaulin covering this rickety furniture, he had spread scores of tiny red envelopes containing sim cards, each with a small sticker displaying the connection details, The only other assets he possessed were a folded piece of white tarpaulin measuring 3 x 4 ft. and a couple of basic mobile phones.
The DIY Wizard of Awes
This masked superhero was a seasoned multitasker. When I approached him, he was setting up connectivity for a couple of other folks standing around his modest establishment. Without as much as even looking up, he pointed towards the pile of sim envelopes, urging me to choose a phone number. As I went through this pile, I could not ignore the simplistic process he followed to provide connectivity to the unfortunate un-connecteds!
The wizard would ask the customers to hold up the white tarpaulin behind their head as he clicked the mug shot necessary for ID with his basic smartphone. He would then upload the mug shot to the network operator’s site, along with the other necessary documents. Within minutes, the customers were walking away with an activated sim card, their only connection with their friends, family, and colleagues.
For each sim he sold for Rs.100, he must earn just a part of that amount. Not much for the effort needed for getting each connection live. Yet, this impassive messiah connected all who came exuding silent warmth. He did the same for me within the next 15 minutes. As I walked away filled with gratitude, I also admired the single-mindedness of this gentleman who, for meagre earning, gave people a connected world. It filled my heart with blessings and silent prayers for him!
