“Ring ring. Ring ring.” Just writing it makes me shudder. It’s what I shall call “ring tolerance”— the amount a person lets their phone into their lives. Some people are wired to them, others use them as if they’re a painful medical procedure. The problems begin when people with different ring tolerances need to be in contact.

For me, the cell phone comes under ‘necessary evil’ category and I dread having to make calls. It’s not a socialising issue: I’m perfectly happy to meet people, well, in person. It’s the telephone conversations I can’t stand.

Some people, though, pick up the phone and speak with the same ease they conduct conversations over the dinner table. “Why bother typing a text or waiting for a mail when you can just pick up the phone and get it over with?” says one person in this camp.

Well, that’s fine if the person at the other end is similarly bionically implanted onto their phones. But if they’re of a low ring tolerance, it becomes a quality of life issue, and I exaggerate only slightly, since some people are truly indiscriminate with their phoning. For a while, as soon as I sat down to lunch at 1pm, the phone would start ringing — people who’ve been stuck in meetings all morning, suddenly set free to get on with their actual work.

Or, a person would call repeatedly through the day each time something occurred to them or they had a question: each call no longer than 20 or 30 seconds in which they’d essentially think aloud at me then end the call. They’d ask questions and then, having heard them spoken aloud, answer them themselves (why involve me in this, just talk to yourself!). Or they’d ask non-urgent questions that could have been collated and sent by mail.

Terrible procrastination

Part of the reason for this, is that so much work happens in a panic. Every so often I do a freelance writing job. I’m asked if I’m free for work, and then there’s silence for three weeks. Suddenly one day, I’m sent the brief and the phone starts ringing in a panic, because the work absolutely must be finished in two days.

Similarly with other events I’m involved with — though they’re known about months beforehand, it’s only in the week before that things get done. This is not judgement — I’m a terrible procrastinator myself. Also, the hectic life schedules here and the fact that everybody from labour to management follows the same procedure means that this is the very character of work in Bengaluru. When everything is last minute, the cell phone is a saviour. (However, sometimes I wonder if this work culture has been created by the cell phone. When people are always just a call away, the need for advance planning is reduced or even eliminated.)

Either way, it doesn’t suit me; someone who constantly ignores his ringing phone, or with no motivation to remember, often forgets (and sometimes, “forgets”) to switch it back from silent.

Luckily I have a core group that’s either the same way or that understands. My closest friend, who always answers his phone when I call, never opens conversations with an accusatory, “I tried calling you but...” or the annoying: “Where were you??” Another group of us regularly disappear from each other’s lives, often for weeks, but there’s no recrimination when we’re back to social mode. For some people though, this reluctance to answer the telephone is taken personally. If you feel that way, consider this: I’d much much rather meet you face-to-face than talk to you over a telephone.

Gautam Raja is a journalist based in Bengaluru, India.