Admittedly, this is not about KGAF itself. Maybe it does raise some issues though. With no further ado…
After spending most of Sunday afternoon and evening at KGAF with the kiddos, they were starting to tire, asking to go home. Wife wanted to listen to two sessions at David Sassoon Library that would run later than the kids’ bedtimes, so she stayed on while a friend and I walked with the little ones to Churchgate and caught a train home.
About 10pm, wife called. I answered, but asked her to wait a minute because I had to tuck in the kids’ mosquito nets. When I returned, she said, as near verbatim as we can remember: “Dilip, I’m at a public phone and my time is running out!” She told me she was at Churchgate station, about to catch a train for home.
When she got home an hour later, she had a story to tell.
While she was waiting for me to come back from tucking in the nets, a man came up behind her at the public phone. Stood there, as if waiting to use it. When she hung up, he asked her if it was working. Saying “yes”, she walked across the station concourse to buy a ticket at the window.
A minute later, as she stood in line, the man appeared beside her, standing there in the adjacent line. She paid no attention, but this got her worried.
Ticket bought, she went back to the phone and dialed a friend’s number, hoping to ask him to pick her up at our station, to bring her home. As she stood there waiting for him to answer, the man appeared beside her again. The worry grew.
Our friend did not answer. Wife hung up and walked over to the next-departing train and got into the women’s compartment. Only one other woman there, plus a slew of scurrying mice. So wife got off at Marine Lines. She deliberately did not get back into another compartment, for fear of running into the man again. She waited for the next train, found the ladies’ compartment had plenty of women returning from KGAF, and came home.
As she finished telling me this, our friend whom she had tried to call from Churchgate rang the bell. Puzzled look on his face. Said he had a missed call a few minutes after 10 — he was unable to get to the phone in time, that must have been the payphone she had called from. But almost immediately, there had been another call from the same number. (He showed us). When he answered, this time, a male voice asked for “Dilip”.
Our friend said “wrong number”, and hung up.
We spent several speechless minutes thinking about the motives and compulsions of a stranger who heard my wife using my name in conversation, followed her around the station, picked up the phone after her second (attempted) call, hit the “redial” button and used my name himself.
