Many a life and love sagas have been ‘lost’ in the Bollywood of yore when mobile phones did not exist. Let us try and ‘find’ a few of those stories. In Dil Apna Aur Preet Parai (1960) the good doctor’s wicked wife Kusum refuses to pass on the urgent telephonic message from the hospital to her husband. The patient dies. Vasu’s selfish neighbour Mrs. Kundenlal in Ek Duje Ke Liye (1981) does not pass on the urgent message for him to stay home as there was a supari contract on him. Neither is the culprit able to reach his henchmen to call off the killing. Vasu gets beaten to death. The mobile phone could have saved both their lives. In Junoon (1992), on the day of their registered marriage Ravi has to rush to his hometown to perform his father’s final rites. Convinced that Ravi has ditched her, Neeta marries another guy. A simple mobile phone text could have saved the marriage.
Hidden identity
Before the late 1990s, the land line phones had no caller IDs either. Anyone could make anonymous calls. In Hera Pheri (1976), two small-time hoodwinkers Ajay and Vijay pretending to be from CBI Delhi, call up various smugglers from a public phone booth, making them sweat and piss. What wasn’t so funny was the culprit of a homicidal attempt in Benaam (1974) calling up the eye- witness at his home and office and threatening him with serious consequences.
Prior to mobile phone era and caller IDs, there used to be something called ‘blank call’ in which the caller would remain silent. But often, the receiver would guess who it was – as Anu in Ashiqui (1990) figures out that the sounds of silence at the other end could only be Rahul’s. In Badmash Company (2010) the wayward son Karan in serious trouble in a foreign land calls his mother in India from a phone booth on her landline. He chokes over his tears unable to speak. But she knows who the caller is and urges her son in Punjabi not to weep.
Basic phones only
Landline phones had no time stamps. It was left to Sagar’s memory to remember the precise time 11.03 pm at which Jaideep went to make a telephone call in Aitbaar (1985) which was an adaptation of Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder.
Speaker phone features hadn’t arrived. So, the kidnapper would hold the phone receiver to the child’s mouth and make the hostage talk to the petrified parent before taking back the receiver and speaking into it, placing the demand for ransom, as the kidnapper Ghanshyam in Zinda Dil (1975) demonstrates. Sometime in the late 1980s, arrived those cordless handsets which the better-off families (like those in Yash Chopra films) could afford. This allowed Lalit Khanna in Chandni (1989) to strut excitedly all around his spacious bungalow speaking over his cordless handset to the tour organizers, making honeymoon arrangements.
There was no GPRS/PIN location obviously. But clever men used their aural senses as ‘GPRS’. From the sound of a running train in the background, Shakaal in Yadoon ki Baraat (1973) could make out from that his foe Jack was calling from a public booth near a railway line. Cleverer men like David in Aakhree Rasta (1986) used the recorded sound of a train in the background as a red herring to fool the police. It is not possible to transmit an audio file over a landline phone. Adhir had to sing the full song Jalte hain jiske liye for his lady love Sujata in Sujata (1959). As Reeta and Naresh had to sing Sun Sun Sun re Balam to each other over phone in Pyar Mohabbat (1966). Calls between two cities (Delhi and Nainital, for example) had to be made using a service called pre-booked ‘trunk call’. And the connection could be wretched with each party bellowing ‘HELLOs’ at each other, as people like DK Malhotra in Masoom (1983) discovered. Landlines had extensions in which a 3rd party could listen in. The thug Sethi in The Great Gambler (1979) overhears in the landline extension about a plot that his boss is hatching with Marconi to get him eliminated – and is thus forewarned.
Mobile phones
And then we ‘found’ the mobile phone. And like a new toy, we started using it in every novel way possible. In Kaho Na.. Pyar Hai (2000) the number stored as the notorious “Sir ji” was dialed and Mr. Saxena’s mobile started ringing, unmasking the true villain.
Call tracing, intercepts and other technical jargon related to mobile technology was in the core of the scripts of films like A Wednesday (2008) and Drishyam (2015). But how does one explain Sarfaraz and Jagat Janani in PK (2014) not even texting each other to try and clear the misunderstanding over the letter in the church that was never meant for Jaggu?
With the good comes the bad. Landline phones had those very tensile, twisted cords that came in handy for strangulating the victim – as the corrupt cop Kader does to Sharda in Dharam aur Kanoon (1985).
Mobile phones too could kill. in Rajneeti (2010) the politician Babulal is ‘gifted’ with a special mobile phone. Minutes later it rings. Babulal presses the ‘Accept’ button. KABOOM! The blue car carrying Babulal explodes into a splendorous orange-black inferno. Bollywood had ‘found’ mobile phone bombs.