SIMs, Smokers and Countrymen

"Have 15 lakh taka ready by this Thursday! Got it?" Demands the caller. 

"Where am I going to get that much money?" Answers my dad to the anonymous caller. 

"Ok, then, how about 15 thousand taka?"

At this point, dad should have agreed to pay 20 thousand – the 5 thousand extra for the entertainment of experiencing the fastest slashing of a price tag by 99%.

I sure hope that such threat calls will also reduce by 99% after May 31, 2016. After all, the virtual wall of Facebook and the mobile phone has given the gall to many a troll to have a ball with no possibilities of a fall. 

It is also a date past which I, and probably many others, are hoping for a 100% elimination of the feature-film-long recorded messages of mobile phone operators with pleas for biometric re-registration of SIMs. Only after the message is the ring tone, thus adding to the already painfully long waiting time for the recipient to answer the phone, if at all.

I myself fulfill my duty before the first deadline of April 30 and pass the biometric test with Golden GPA 5. Thank heavens, I am not put on the spot on national television through a street interview. 

The deadline shifts by a month. Yet, like the March of the Penguins, one by one, tiny SIMs line up, adding to a whopping 25 million. That's 20% of the total active SIMs in the country,  holding off defiantly, showing the middle finger instead of the index and the thumb, to the scanning machine. By Toutatis, that's like having the gall of the indomitable Gauls, led by Asterix and Obelix while being inspired by SIMmetrix and Biometrix, against the mighty Romans.

It could very well be that the ring tone and the anticipated "hello" could be further removed by a new message added to the old one: "Thank you for re-registering your SIM. However, if you haven't, you can do so and re-activate your SIM by paying Taka 150…"

As the last minute of May 31 sees a lot of mobile connections go up in smoke, so do a lot of cigarettes without being accorded a single puff, as the world concludes observing the World No Tobacco Day. It is a day that is a nightmare for the tobacco companies otherwise engaged in killing their best customers. For a day, many stop throwing cigarette butts on the roads (the roads can get cancer too). It is a day, when quitters try to be winners.

June 1. I call my friend, the one with a SIM among the club of 25 million, through WhatsApp. He has also broken his 24 hour fasting from smoking. He can only swallow one loss at a time and hence the SIM gives in to the mighty nicotine. The state coffers take a hit from the mobile phone sector, but definitely not from the tobacco sector as the child continues to roll bidis and work at the tobacco plantations while a few less talk on the phone (but continue on WhatsApp). 

SIMs, smokers and countrymen, lend me your ears…

That's a tall order, considering we are now short of 25 million pairs. I just hope Fizz has come home on time to re-register…

The writer is an engineer at Ford & Qualcomm USA and CEO of IBM & Nokia Siemens Networks Bangladesh turned comedian (by choice), the host of ABC Radio's Good Morning Bangladesh and the founder of Naveed's Comedy Club. 
E-mail: naveed@naveedmahbub.com