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...