Bantala: At a time when mobile phones have become part and parcel of our day to day lives, residents of Dandabahali village under Kothabhuin panchayat located in Satkosia sanctuary area in Angul district are forced to keep their phones even the costly ones on their shelves, unused for most parts of the day.
The reason, they say, is that their village is not coming under the area of any network providing companies.
However, they have an alternative as well that they use only in a case of emergency.
The available alternative is Basant Rout’s shop. Basant has a feature phone. It is only his phone that receives the network of a particular private company. But it is also not that much easy. He has to hang his phone on a tree in front of his shop to get the signal.
Basant says, “Dandabahali village is inhabited by 72 families. Almost all the villagers have mobile phones, including costly android ones. But they are lying on the shelves of their houses unused.”
Whenever they need to talk with their friends and relatives, the villagers trek five kilometers to avail the signal.
But in case of urgency like calling up ambulance, contacting fire station or police station or giving any important message to their distant family members, they turn up at Basant’s shop.
And the scene of villagers talking over Basant’s phone seems to be straight out of a comedy flick.
The villagers speak while Basant’s phone is still in a hanging state, with the loudspeaker being in an ‘on’ mode.
And for this the villagers are more thankful to Basant than to the company whose signal Basant’s phone gets and for the hardship he is enduring to provide the service to them.
Basant says he has to open his shop at 4 o’ clock every day. “I open my shop at 4am and close at 9pm. after opening my shop the first thing I do is to hang the phone in the tree. It is because; the relatives and friends of Dandabahali villagers who are living outside contact me first on my number to transfer their messages to their relatives,” he said.
The administration is also aware of this network problem as well as Basant’s service. The administrative officials call up Basant if they have any information for the villagers.
Basant never asks anything from his villagers in return of his service. “I have never taken nor demanded a pie from the villagers for my service. I only ask people to be careful enough not to shake the tree while speaking otherwise the network gets snapped.”
Asha Upasi Dehuri says if she gets a call from Basant’s number she becomes sure that it is an emergency call. “After getting calls from his number, I call up 108 or 102 ambulance, as per requirement. All depend on his phone,” she adds.
Villagers including Prakash Chandra Pradhan, Sangeeta Jena, Kailash Pradhan and some others say they have given Basant’s number to their sons’ and daughters’ in-laws so that they can contact them through his phone, in case there is any emergency.
After getting message from Basant we reach his shop and talk to our relatives from his phone. One thing we must say is that Basant never gets angry or feel disturbed whatever number of times our relatives call him or we come to his shop,” they say in praise of Basant.
PNN