More about Mobiles

I thought that, having taken the paperwork in to an !dea store in person, there was a decent chance that I would no longer have a problem.  However, I was mistaken.    Thursday morning, I was able to use my phone to call the travel agent in Delhi.  It was the day I was supposed to check out of this hotel, and they informed me that they were full and I could not extend my stay.  I was hoping he could find something.  He called me back shortly after 10 with the information that he had managed to get my stay here extended another 5 days  (this is why Deb recommended him).

However, shortly after that, when I tried to call for a car (see previous entry), I got a message on the phone of which I could only understand the word "documents."  (Telugu has a lot of random English words, which has made it possible for me to make guesses at a lot of conversations.)  I got the front desk to call for the car, and decided that I needed to go back to the !dea store.

I got Ahmed, the same driver again.  He has easily the best English of the drivers I have had.  His brother is a mechanical engineer in Memphis, so he has a lot to chat with me about.  He has also taken something of a proprietary interest in us.  I explained about the phone, and he offered to give me his to use.  I told him that was plan B, first we were going back to the !dea store.

Luckily, the carpet store had given me a business card with a map on the back.  (Most business cards that I've seen have a map on the back.  I can't imagine how else anyone would find anything, as there don't appear to be house numbers of any kind.  Addresses tend to be "Road # X, behind the Y garden, past the flyover.")  Armed with this, we set off.  I kept telling Ahmed I wanted the !dea store, and he kept pulling up in front of other random mobile stores, and kiosks selling multiple brand SIM cards.  I could see from the map that we were headed in the right direction, and told him to keep going.  He clearly didn't think that I knew what I was talking about, but sure enough, we got to the actual !dea store.

Once there, we went in, and luckily the same clerk was working.  Ahmed swung into action.  There was a lot of Telugu back and forth, and I gave the clerk my mobile number.  He looked it up on the computer, and explained that the documents had been submitted, but because I am a foreigner, it will take longer than usual to process them.  Ahmed got very upset with him (he later told me that he told him that I was a single mother with a small child and could not be trapped without a mobile) and the clerk finally said that he had sent a request that they look at my papers, and that the block should be lifted in 3-4 hours.  I took his name and phone number, in case we had a problem and needed to come back.

In a couple of hours, the phone worked again, and the next morning, I got a text message saying that the documents had been received by central processing, and were pending review.  I'm hoping I manage to get out of the country before they decide that foreigners cannot have SIM cards at all.