My first encounter with Veerappan

Yesterday (17th Jan'09), was the Sports Day for the Junior Division students at my daughter's school. The one thing I like about her school is that the teachers ensure that every student participates in one thing or the other. My daughter was part of a dance and also the "Hoopla race". The children's events were followed by some fun events for parents and teachers. After the events as I was leaving with my wife and kids, I met a friend of mine... whom I have not met in ages... We were colleagues at L&T Mysore works. His children were studying in the same school. We quickly exchanged updates, our numbers and promised to meet soon and bid good bye. This chance meeting took me back to my "Mysore days"......
.... I had joined L&T Mysore in 1992 and if my memory is right, the incident that I am describing below probably occured in 1992 or 1993. It was the time when Veerappan was always in the news and was very much active... (Who doesn't know Veerappan... the dreaded Sandalwood smuggler and Poacher). At L&T, I was part of the Electronics QC department at that time. I was responsible for inspection of all the semiconductor devices that are used in various departments. Every other members of the team had work related to specific departments like DMP, Medical, T.Com, FDD/HDD etc. My work involved testing of semiconductor devices for all these departments (with the exception of FDD/HDD departments). So, I used to get calls from all these departements to enquire if a particular IC / transistor / diode or any such components has been tested and sent to the stores. We being in QC, had friends in all the departments. I was familiar with almost everyone in the production departments as I interact with them very often. One day a call came to my department asking for me... As usual it was Phadke (Diwakar Phadke was a colleague who used to inspect non-semiconductor items for Medical department) who picked the call. He shouted for me.... "Suri, call for you". I went to the phone and answered the call... I knew it was someone from the "Materials" department or Manju (Manjunath was almost always at my desk and he used to take the items as soon as I finish testing ... his items were always high priority for him) from TCom department or someone else from the other production departments who were waiting for one of their items. I said "Hello, Suresh here..." (I was expecting someone to say...Is 74LS138 ready? or 74HC139 ready? or when will the diode consignment be cleared? etc...). But what I heard from the other end, shocked and surprised me... The unfamiliar voice said..."Hello Suresh, this is Veerappan"... My head went reeling for a second... (Veerappan?? why would Veerappan call me?? Veerappan was in news around this time). I knew someone was playing a prank on me.... but it was not a familiar voice and thats what surprised me... I blurted out... "Yes, what is it regarding?" Veerappan replied, "I heard that the "Kontron" consignment has been inspected and I wanted to pick some ICs." I said "Okay, you can pick them up... but bring some Sandalwood when you come over" as I knew someone was playing a prank on me. After couple of minutes, a person walked into my department and asked - "Excuse me, who is Suresh?" Invariably, everyone who comes to my department used to first talk to me as my seat was just at the entrance of the department. (I had seen this person a couple of times in the medical department as we pass the departement when we guys used to go for lunch. But I did not know his name). I said "I am Suresh. What can I do for you?". This figure in front of me streched his hand and introduced himself - "Hi Suresh, I am Veerappan". This time my head really went reeling and was also embarassed. I asked for sandalwood assuming that someone who I know was playing a prank on me... and here is a person standing in front of me in flesh and blood and his name is Veerappan. I apologised to him for asking him to get sandalwood and told him that I assumed it was someone palying a prank on me. He took the items that were required and went away. That was my first encounter with Veerappan.
Over a period of time we became friends due to more frequent interactions. Then, I moved out of Mysore works (moved to the Cement Marketing division in Chennai) and he too moved out of L&T... I guess he probably joined GE...
During all these years, once in a while I used to remember my first "encounter" with Veerappan and smile to myself not knowing where Veerappan is now settled. Until I saw him at the Sports Day of my daughter. Yes, it was the same Veerappan that I met at the school. And to my surprise, he lives very very close to my home and his office is even closer which is at a "stone throw's" distance. I am hoping to have more frequent "encounters" with this "warm and friendly" Veerappan...
(P.S: There is another funny incident which is related to the dreaded Veerappan. I shall write about that later).

The Speaker Phone

The day was "Thiruvathira" (10th Jan) something similar / equivalent of "Karva chaut" observed in North India. It was a quiet Saturday afternoon. Mom and wife were observing a fast. After a late lunch, I was trying to make myself busy browsing through some old photographs and burning them on to a DVD. Kids were asleep and in the midst of burning the CD, I heard a beep from the UPS and I was shattered. That was my first ever attempt at burning a DVD with my DVD writer (though I had bought it more than an year ago) and almost 50 percent of the burning process was complete. The beep from my UPS indicated that the power had failed and my UPS had a back up of only 10-15 minutes. Apart from the time spent on getting the photos together and burning it, the DVD would go waste if the burning is not completed. I was just praying and hoping that the power would be back within the next 10 minutes. I waited with crossed fingers after switching off the monitor (I believe that, switching off the monitor increases the UPS stand by time by a couple of minutes). I was hoping against hope that the power would be back and thats when I heard the continuous beep from the UPS... an indication that its battery is dying... and then it happened... My computer had shutdown... and I lost the DVD :(
Then I went downstairs and was browsing through the newspaper... my wife was busy folding the clothes, mom was doing something in the kitchen, dad was busy with his "self-created home projects" and thats when the phone went trring trring... I was the nearest to the phone and so I attended it..'. The voice from the other end said "Hello". (It was a familiar voice but I was not able to recognise it immediately). I said a "hello" and the voice said... "This is Stephen here..." and I recognised his voice and I said "Hi this is Suresh here". "Is Uncle there (referring to my dad)?" I said "Yes, just a minute...hold on..." and shouted for my dad who was busy in his room. He came out of the room with some tools in one hand and a plastic pipe in the other. He carefully placed everything on the sofa and as he stretched his hand to take the receiver from me he asked "Stephen??" and I was shocked wondering how did he know that Stephen was on the line... He took the receiver and answered the call, but the line got disconnected. I was still in a state of shock trying to figure out how dad managed to know that Stephen was the person who called. My dad said "the line got disconnected.." and probably reading my mind (maybe the shock was written all over my face)... he continued... "I could hear his voice loud and clear". ("He could hear Stephen's voice???, how is that possible?") I thought to myself as I was waiting for Stephen to call back. Then I "realised" that while picking the call, I had "accidentally" hit the "Speaker" button and thats how dad heard Stephen's voice. As I was telling dad that I might have hit the "Speaker" button by mistake, the phone rang again. As soon as I picked up "Stepehen asked, "Is no one at home?" and I said "Yes, everyone is here" (If no one was there how did I pick the phone?? I thought). This time I too could hear his voice loud and clear apart from the voice through the ear piece. This time I was sure that I had not hit the "Speaker" button and when I saw the keypad, the "Speaker" indicator was OFF. Suddenly I realised that I was listening to his "real" voice and I cut the line and I heard him say in his "real" voice "I am at your door"... I opened the door to see Stephen and his family standing there :)
Then I realised why this confusion had occured. Stephen rang the bell for quite some time and there was no response... (How could anyone respond??? There was no power you see). And everyone were busy in their own world and so no one heard anyone opening the gate. Since there was no response, Stephen tried our phone to check if we were not at home. As I was answering the phone, my dad was just coming out of his room which is close to the front door. So, I was hearing Stephen from the "receiver of the phone" while my dad had actually heard Stephen's voice at the door, but did not realise that it was from the front door. Stephen on the other hand thought I am going to open the door when he heard me say "Just a minute... hold on" and so disconnected the line. I was waiting for him to call and he was waiting for me to open the door. Since I did not open the door even after almost a minute, he called again... Thats when we came to know about the "secret" of the speaker phone...