The Number

The Number


It was small in size about two inches wide. It, at the most takes a finger and a thumb to hold it up. It was a man showing a new model of the mobile phone introduced in the Japanese market. The cover was a flip-open type, hinged at it base to the console pad, showing lighted buttons.

It was one of the many advertisements that come out in Business Magazines or in the business section of the daily newspapers with photos of new Japanese made products. The impact is such that it makes it very tempting for the viewers to actually see the product in hand and to savour the minuteness of detail which is so characteristic of the Japanese products. To speak of the products they are fully functional and are endowed with various light and display features.

It could be any of the other products, a digital camera, a camcorder… anything in the world of digital electronics. These have wonderful display features in full glory of colour. The smallness of it in the human hands makes even more intriguing.

Sean put down the newspaper showing the advertisement of the mobile phone. He had seen many of those, in colour, as well as in black and white since the early days. In the early days the ads focussed more on the beauty of the faces of the children. Then slowly came a time when the children were used to promote products which became the focus and the children’s face was pushed into the background.

He remembered those days. He used to keep a collection of those photos. He kept an album with photos carefully pasted in them. He loved children. He was going through a difficult phase of time. It was a painful phase. It was his child, a son. He was to grow up and study in a far of tropical country. He was to stay away from his son. This was a separation in his family which he was not able to bear. He had business to look after. He was not to meet his son until he had grown up and was earning is own living. His mother would stay with him for a while till he could manage on his own. He just would be covering his son’s basic necessities and would not be indulging him in other luxuries. So had the agreement gone. Sean had business to look after. He was one of the wealthiest business persons in the world and was even instrumental in the economic restructuring of Japan after the war. But his son was being adopted, rather taken away.

They were not rich, they were not powerful. But they were breaking apart his family and taking away his son. He had agreed to their conditions and the separation. His son was totally oblivious of the goings around him. He was just told that he was to have a new family and was to live with them till he grew up.

The conditions were laid down and were to be strictly followed. The son slowly got himself adjusted to living with the foster family, going to school, learning, playing with his new friends and so on. Sean and his wife kept contact with their son and as per the conditions they were to leave him and forget him.
The son too, slowly lost all memories of them as he had now grown up. He was now through college and had taken up a job. The one day he came across an advertisement. It was of a mobile phone being shown to the viewers. It was in one of his client’s office. Something pulled the strings in his mind. He was standing by the roadside later waiting to cross the road. His mind was still in the advertisement he had seen. It was bringing him memories of his childhood days, the adoption and the goings-on. He was then not able to understand why. He was not blaming anyone but could see his parents painfully bearing it in their hearts without disclosing to him anything, going as per the conditions.

The thought of the condition struck him and took his thoughts further early in the days to a shop where his father had taken him one day. They were going to have a drink of coke. He was very small then much smaller than during the separation. His father had told him a joke. He than asked him a question ‘what would he now prefer, his mobile phone or his parents and the family?’

He remembered replying to his father by punching a number in saying that this number in the mobile phone would keep them together.

Later as developments took place he was not to have even a mobile phone. He checked the number, somewhere something rang a bell in his mind but it was not clicking. The number was still eluding him somewhere. It was evening and the sun was setting and the climate hot. He was returning home. He was going to catch a bus.

His mind was still occupied by the thoughts of the eluding number. He then suddenly remembered. It was the number he used to dial when his father was setting up business in this country. Their family would often later talk of remembering the number.
‘It would bring us all back one day’ his mother had said one day sensing the days the days to come.

He remembered of now that as he had dialled the number to his office from a table with a newspaper on it showing the advertisement of the mobile phone, he had felt the man sitting beside notice after , he had finished the talk, say to him in his mother’s words as she often did, ‘The number should come to you by itself I have put it in your stomach’.

His memories came back now as he returned home. He would wait for things to take a turn by themselves…