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Dhruv Saxena
My mother has called me seventeen times in a single day.
Not because of an emergency. Not because anything was wrong. Because she had something to tell me, I did not pick up the first time, and the correct response to this situation, in her framework, is to call again. And then again. And then again, at intervals that suggest she has a system, until I pick up.
The voice note option exists. She knows it exists. My phone has a voice note. It has had a voice note for as long as I have had the phone. She has never once used it.
I asked her about this directly last year. I said Maa, you know you can leave a voice note. I will get it and call you back. She looked at me the way she looks at things that are technically true but practically irrelevant. She said she knows about voice note. She just does not see the point of talking to a recording when she can talk to me.
I said sometimes I am in a meeting and cannot pick up.
She said then I will call after the meeting.
I said I do not always know when the meeting ends.
She said that is fine, she will figure it out.
The conversation ended there. The voice note situation has not changed.
I was home last month, sitting at the kitchen table with chai and Mom's Magic biscuits the way every kitchen table conversation in my life has happened, and my phone rang. It was a friend calling about something. I missed it. He called again thirty seconds later. I picked up. My mother, who was across the table, watched this happen and said see, your friend also does not leave voice notes. I said that proved her point. She looked very satisfied.
I did not have a good response to this. She had a point. The second call is just how people communicate when something actually matters to them. The voice note is for things that can wait. My mother does not have things that can wait. She has things she is calling about right now.
The Missed Call as Communication
Before we get to the seventeen calls, we have to talk about the missed call as a standalone communication tool.
My mother uses the missed call the way other people use a text message. One missed call means call me back when you have a moment. Two missed calls means call me back soon, I have something to tell you. Three missed calls means call me back now, this is not urgent but I have been waiting.
Four missed calls is where the system changes register. Four missed calls means something has moved from I have something to tell you into I need to speak to you and the distinction matters.
I can read the missed call count the way other people read a text. I see eleven missed calls from my mother and I call back immediately, heart slightly elevated, running a quick assessment of what could be wrong. Usually nothing is wrong. She had something to tell me and I had not picked up and the calls had accumulated while I was unavailable.
My friend Nikhil has the same system with his mother with one addition. His mother, after approximately six missed calls, begins calling his father's phone. Not because she thinks something is wrong with Nikhil. Just to expand the network of people who might be able to reach him. His father then calls Nikhil. Nikhil then calls his mother. The call he eventually has is the call she wanted to have six calls ago.
He has timed the average gap between the first missed call and the eventual connection. It is thirty-four minutes. He knows this because he tracked it for two months after the pattern became noticeable. His mother does not know he tracked it. He has not told her.
The Content of the Call
Here is the thing about the seventeen calls.
When I finally pick up, the thing she had to tell me is almost never an emergency. It is almost never something that could not have waited. It is almost always something she found interesting or useful or relevant to my life that she wanted to share immediately because the immediacy was part of how she wanted to share it.
She found an article about something related to my work. She wanted to tell me about something that happened at the kitty party. She had a question about something I had mentioned on a previous call that she had been thinking about. She wanted to give me a recipe update. She found out something about a relative and wanted to share it before it became old news.
None of these things required seventeen calls. All of them felt, to her, like they required reaching me as soon as possible. Because she was thinking about me. Because she had information relevant to my life. Because sharing it quickly was the sharing of it properly.
The seventeen calls are not anxiety. They are enthusiasm. They are the communication style of someone for whom the thing she wants to tell me is already urgent by virtue of having thought of me.
My friend Karan has a different problem. His mother does the same thing but she forgets what she was calling about by the time he picks up. She calls seven times. He calls back. She says oh beta I called you, how are you. He says I know, I am calling you back, what did you want. She says actually I cannot remember now. They talk for twenty minutes about other things. At the end of the call she sometimes remembers what she was calling about. Sometimes she does not.
He says these are actually some of the best calls they have. The forgotten reason becomes the reason to just talk. He has stopped being frustrated by the forgotten thing. He considers it a feature.
The Hierarchy of Communication
My mother's communication hierarchy is very clear and has never been stated explicitly.
At the top is the phone call. Specifically the voice call. She calls, you pick up, you talk. This is the correct way to communicate. This is the one she prefers. This is the one she will always attempt first.
Below that is the repeat phone call. If the first call does not connect, you call again. And again. You do not leave a voice note because a voice note is you talking into a void and hoping for the best and hoping for the best is not a communication strategy.
Below that is the WhatsApp message. She has learned to use WhatsApp and she uses it, but it is a fallback. Something she reaches for when the calls have not connected and she needs to communicate before the information goes stale. The WhatsApp messages she sends have the quality of someone who is writing what they would have preferred to say. They are slightly formal. They end with a question mark that is really a request to call her back.
At the bottom, practically underground, is the voice note. She has never used it. She will never use it. It is a theoretical option that does not fit the way she thinks about talking to me. Talking to me is a live event. It happens in real time between two people. A voice note is a monologue delivered to a machine. She did not raise me so she could leave monologues for a machine.
The Part I Have Realised
I used to find the seventeen calls mildly stressful. The phone lighting up repeatedly, the accumulating missed call count, the slight guilt of not having picked up sooner.
I find it less stressful now. Not because the calls have decreased. Because I have understood what the calls actually are.
Each call is her thinking of me. Each call is her having something to say and wanting to say it to me specifically and not to a recording and not to a text thread. Each call is her operating according to a communication philosophy that was formed before voice note existed and has not updated because why would it update when the goal is talking to me and the calls eventually result in talking to me.
The system works. It is inefficient by every measurable standard. It works anyway.
My phone is ringing right now. It is her. This is the second call in the last four minutes.
I am going to pick up.
