The mobile phone rings, and my seven-year-old granddaughter calmly picks it up, knowing exactly which buttons to press or touch to get connected to whoever is calling. I recall my own childhood. I enjoyed no such luxuries, and actually, neither did my parents or my siblings.
Telephone during those days was a privilege that only a few enjoyed and it was not the sleek fitting in the palm of your hand mobile that are so common and available in such abundance. It used to be a bulky monstrous piece of equipment that of course could not be carried to any part of the house and was fixed in some corner where it was joined to the wires connecting you to the telephone pole outside.
This telephone pole connection was almost a status symbol which placed you in the category of those who had the right connections to obtain a telephone connection.
Yes getting that connection was not an easy task. If I remember rightly getting this connection was so important that every member of Sindh Assembly had a quota of how many telephone applications they could recommend and getting such a recommendation was not an easy task.
I worked in the Sindh Assembly in those days in the office of the leader of opposition and every day there would be several people visiting our office for the sole purpose of getting a member of the assembly to approve their application for a telephone connection.
Some had genuine personal needs but many were there just to make a quick buck as an approved telephone connection application fetched a good amount of money.
How difficult the ‘hello revolution’ was and how much of a game changer can also be gauged by the fact that there were only 12,436 land line connections that existed in the whole country at the time of Partition. Most of these connections were used for administrative purposes. As far as Karachi was concerned, it had just two manual telephone exchanges, which increased to five telephone exchanges as Karachi was declared the capital. These exchanges were at Cantt, Garden, Central (Bolton Road), Trunk (McLeod Road) and at Sabzi Mandi. Each had a capacity of 1200 lines. How rare was a telephone in the country in the early days of our independence can be ascertained by the fact that in those days there was one telephone for every 3,000 persons. Compare that to the situation today where even school-going children have mobile phones in their school bags.
These were extremely interesting times and telephone was a significant piece of relationships in the communities. People would hide the fact that they had a telephone in the house because this knowledge could lead to unwanted disturbances at odd times of the day and night.
Complete strangers would call at odd hours requesting you to please call an auntie or uncle from the neighbourhood as there is an emergency and they need to contact these people immediately. It was not just a matter of being disturbed but the question of telephone bill payments as no calls were free in those days and long-distance calls were specially quite expensive. It was common practice for the owner of the telephone to stand close to the telephone invading the privacy of the receiver just to pre-empt any attempt by him to quietly dial back long distance.
Sometimes arguments on a single call could create rifts between neighbours that lasted for considerable periods of time.
What replaced the present sleek mobiles that fit in the palm of your hands were bulky objects with a dialler in the middle. The more cautious would install a padlock on the dialler to prevent any attempts to dial. There were many ways to pass the padlock and there were experts who could do it and enjoy free long-distance calls at the expanse of the owner.
Who has a telephone in the community was also a big secret as the owners did not want to disclose but were helpless before predators who followed the telephone lines from telephone poles to their homes, taunting them for keeping such valuable information a secret.
Mobile phones are truly a revolution in communication. Those enjoying the fruits of this revolution cannot even imagine how difficult it was to connect in the past, nor how easy and convenient it has become. It is not just the speed and convenience, but the low cost of communicating that has changed the way we now interact. Hello to the communication revolution.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2026
The writer is a well-known columnist