The Face behind the Voice

For twelve years, the lady was just a voice over the telephone. It never occurred to me to go and see her, but why would I have to do that? In a determined frequency, I would call her to get things done for me and she never disappointed me in anyway. Just this week, someone else picked up the phone. 

The strange voice made me pause. The smooth, musical tone was replaced by a husky one that offended my ears. She told me the lady had left for Australia after serving for fifteen long years.

“Was she a good friend of yours?” the new lady asked amusingly because there was something in my hesitant tone that suggested the news came as a complete surprise to me.

I ignored her question and stated my business. Perhaps I was used to the efficiency and friendly tone of the former secretary. The new lady was business-like and was out to impress her superiors than callers like me. But her question whether I was a ‘good friend’ or not made me think. How could you be a friend to a person you have never met? 

I had a picture of her formed in my mind as a small, thin and short-haired lady with a nervous disposition but yet strong when it mattered.

I took for granted that she would always pick up the phone. But years had passed and I took many things about her for granted. In a strange way, it was odd, at least for me, that I was not included in her ‘good bye’ list that one would normally send to friends when you leave the country.

But I was not exactly a friend. But if I could string together all the minutes we talked on the phone over the dozen years, then it may be only a couple of days. Just hours, not even a week of exchanging words. I guess it was the number of years rather than the time that had effect on me. 

It was also the way the words were exchanged between us than anything else. 

Normally, you would not be familiar the same way with a person you always order pizza from. It is different though I don’t know exactly the difference. Perhaps I now feel the ‘loss’ because her replacement would not be sympathetic to my requests. But most of all, I never seized the opportunity to put the face on the voice. It was not important then because all I had to do was make that half an hour drive to her office. The drive I never made.   

I am now left to stretch my imagination. She was one of those loose ‘attachments’ in my life. There are quite a few of them. In a long journey of life, one comes up with many such examples. They are part of the thread that keeps everything together. If they don’t leave long lasting impression then you don’t learn anything from human nature.  

These days, you could take a drive and meet many people but they would not make any impression in your mind. They cease to exist the moment you walk out on them. It is not something you could take away with you. An experience you could apply somewhere else at a later date.

Perhaps it is the curse of a city life where moments of boredom always loom large to put one in a depression when life is in a fast lane. You find you create fantasy in your head to amuse yourself. Nothing wrong with that as long as no one gets hurt. I guess it is one way of letting out the stress from your system in a harmless way. And why not?