No surprises, one mistake

The Times of India reports that Indian-Americans spend 3½ hours a month on the phone to India. If it was any other group instead of Indian-Americans, the preceding sentence should have ended with an exclamation mark. Given that its American desis we are talking about, it’s a pity there is no such thing as a ‘ho-hum mark’.

 

A recent study concluded that desis in America spend up to seven minutes a day and 3½ hours a month talking on their phones to folk back in India. And surprisingly, they use mobiles more than landlines to do it. More calls originate from Princeton, San Francisco, Chicago, New York City and Dallas than any other American city. The most-called cities in India are Hyderabad, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Chennai and Bangalore.

 

Going by my own calling patterns and those of scores of my friends, I can only say that this has to be a very conservative estimate indeed. We call home way more often and for way longer than that! On the streets of London and Montreal, I’ve walked past countless desis excitedly, unabashedly and vociferously discussing everything from the price of shares on the Mumbai Stock Exchange (usually in Gujarati) and the esoterics of tertiary calculus (usually in Tamil) to the travails of the cricket team (usually gloomily) and the gyrations of Mallika Sherawat (usually gushingly)! I’m sure American streets are no different. The point is that we desis don’t need a reason to yammer! As Prof. Amartya Sen has averred, we Indians are interlocutors par excellence.

 

The finding that we talk so much is therefore not surprising. The report seems to have got one thing wrong, though. Apparently, a UK-based market research company studied several international calling service providers and ranked a Stockholm-based service as the number one provider. Pfft! Or, as the Brits say, Bo****ks! We know who the number one international calling service provider is, don’t we?