Madam, can i speak to Shweta Sharma?

My 1st mobile connection in Hyderabad was an Idea pre-paid. My second was a Hutch postpaid in my friend's name - i incidentally became his sister for all verification purposes.Then, Hutch became Vodafone and I wanted a connection in my name. Quit Vodafone, dint think it was necessary to clear the last payment since they had a huge deposit.They sent me two dummy legal notices and stopped spamming my inbox.Lazy rascals, they won't settle accounts first. My Airtel post paid corporate connection came through with my name and address proof.This is like some 3 years ago. 

Every few months, I get a call from the Airtel call center asking for a certain Ms Shweta Sharma. Obviously,the first few times, I was polite enough to say wrong number. The following year, again these calls started increasing from different sources and numbers. I suspected this girl must be absconding with pending payment and must have destroyed the SIM card so that nobody tracks her down. Dumbass Airtel has this policy of cycled numbers and yours truly's was perhaps used and destroyed by Shweta.These calls got frequent and intense to the point of warning me to disconnect my connection if i dint tell where Shweta Sharma is. WTH. I said, "theek hai bhai, woh bhi karlo. Fir dekhlo, Consumer Court mein we will sing - You and I in this beautiful world...(former Hutch signature jingle)"

I walk in to an Airtel booth and flagged this problem and this menace kind of stopped for about 10 months or so. Yesterday, in the middle of a spate of meetings at work, i get bombarded by calls. I picked up one and someone rattled off in Telugu. So annoying, why do call centers think everyone will speak/respond in Telugu? There are two acceptable languages of communication - Hindi and English. Of course, I uttered - "Telugu raduu, Hindi mein baat karo( meaining- I don't know Telugu, speak in Hindi)."  Then the conversation went from "Wait, wait.." to someone asking me - "Where is Shweta Sharma?" So, she is still missing.

I had so little patience with such nonsense. From "I don't know." to "Why should I tell you?", the final one was "WTH are you bugging me?". Salesgirl, such a stubborn one.I told her ask Airtel, or else go to a Police Station or better still, Google her. She dint find it funny and I seconded the same. She said she is calling from Airtel. I dared her to suspend my services if that is what she is aiming at. Smart girl got the point. "No madam, hum bill payment ke baad thodi kar rahe hai. Aap ko itna gussa kyun aata hai ji?" Wow! She insisted on knowing my name - I told her it is not Shweta Sharma and she can check with Airtel what my name is and where i live. I asked her to come home and see that no Shweta Sharma lives with me or I am not Shweta Sharma.Again, she asked my name. I told her to go take a dip in Hussain Sagar then open the Airtel records.

She told me Shweta Sharma gave my number as reference, just in case. God only knows, what has become of her and what prompted her to give my number?

Read in TOI just the other day,a woman's docs were misused and there are 30 connections in her name and not a single connection is used by her. She was not aware so many connections were (mis)used in her name. Only after the telecom parties were on their verification drive, this was 'discovered' and thought of as a TOI item.Mine may not be TOI worthy but dear Airtel, this is annoying.

So yeah, in plainspeak i blasted this Airtel girl not to get me into an identity crisis of their making and get her facts checked. 

So who is this Shweta Sharma? Oh by the way, in this part of the world, Shewta could be Swetha or Shwetha or maybe Sweta. Don't know which one is missing.