It was five past midnight

Last night, which was the last night of last year, I, like many other people was celebrating the onset of the new year, occupied in the most natural of all nocturnal human activities - sleeping. I had gone to bed just a little after midnight, thus ushering in the new year in semi wakefulness. At around five past midnight, when I had reached sheep number 7, the calm of the night was broken by the call of Bell's invention. After time had decided to bring in the new year, the phone decided it was time to ring, in the new year.

A call on the land line is quite a rare occurrence given the many cell phones at home, and a call after midnight an even rarer one. I let the ringing continue hoping that ignoring it would make it stop and having a hunch that in all likelihood, the call wasn't meant for anyone at home. As I reached sheep 15 the ringing stopped and I was beginning to drift off.

Just when I had bid good bye to the sheep, the phone rang again. I thought that whoever it was must be quite desperate to get whoever he/she was trying to reach given the time of the night and thus decided to do something about the phone. I got my behind off the bed and picked up the phone and said "Hello".

The voice that greeted me from the other end was sort of high pitched, the type that one does not associate with grown up men. My brain dumbed down with the onset of sleep, for a moment thought it was a woman. At that thought synapses fired, the neural net was suddenly abuzz with activity sending signals to the rest of me to become alert, and suddenly the journey from the bed to the phone seemed worth it. That burst of alertness provoked more thinking and this is the unfortunate bit, the rational me realized in a despair inducing burst of logical deduction that if the voice was indeed that of a young woman, then the call was certainly not meant for me.

After reaching this conclusion the brain decided to begin the shutdown sequence again. At that time, the voice at the other end asked for "Arumugam Sir" and the tiny number of awake grey cells in my head, realized that it was boy and after realizing that, the gray cells went to sleep. I said "wrong number" and hung up, dragged my body to bed and dozed off.

Yawn!
PS: Happy new year!!!