There’s a tune that’s been haunting me. Because of the phone calls.

You know them. The ones where there is no one on the other end, perhaps some faint electrical noises, occasionally a bit of far off laughter, as if there is a party going on in a cave somewhere and you are not invited. You stand there saying “Hello…hello…hello,” in case it is one of the grandchildren trying to tell you that “Mummy’s fallen over and she’s not moving.” Just as you are reaching for the car keys an Asian voice comes on saying “Hello, is that Mr. Martin? My name is Gracie and I am calling you from the Microsoft Technical Division about a problem with your computer.”

I may be retired but I still have all my faculties about me and I am nobody’s fool. I listen to a lot of music but I am also an avid Radio National fan and am well aware of the burgeoning scamming industry. So the first time I was called I just replied “I’m afraid you must have the wrong number. I don’t own a computer,” and hung up. I lied of course, but so had she, and I saw no reason, then, to be impolite.

Rudeness generally upsets me. When I witness ill-mannered behaviour I pity the person who so demeans themselves. I’m not some tedious old pedant who believes we are being swept towards the apocalypse by a deluge of loutish behaviour. Most people are perfectly reasonable. I find the majority of shop-assistants helpful and often pleasantly amusing. I do not expect young people to give up their bus seat for me just because I have white hair. But for a very pregnant woman, or a frail old lady burdened down with shopping bags, I do feel that school-children should disengage themselves from their phones, just for a second, and stand. When they don’t I just think “Your day will come.”

I still believe in the laws of karma. I was a hippy fifty years ago, before I became an academic. You wouldn’t know it to see me in the street. I don’t have a long plait hanging down behind a receding hair line. Or dreads, God help us. I haven’t ‘inhaled’ for over a decade but I still listen to a lot of music. And not just the old stuff. It might be the Grateful Dead or Pink Floyd one minute but just as easily could be Elbow or Julia Holter. The sort of music shelved under ‘alternative’ in JB HiFi. I’m also partial to a bit of Debussy, some Erik Satie, even, occasionally, Shostakovich.

One obscure favourite from years ago was a band called It’s A Beautiful Day, whose electric violin wailed like Coltrane’s sax. They had this great instrumental track called Bombay Calling. I haven’t heard it for years, but the phone calls reminded me.

You see they didn’t stop. Every day the ringing intrudes upon my listening pleasure, disturbs my equilibrium. The voice isn’t always Indian, sometimes it’s Chinese, or other east Asian accent. They could all come from the same polyglot call-centre in Sydney, but I don’t think so. The hiatus before they speak indicates overseas origins. Mostly they are Indian though, so that when my wife, as concerned as I about the welfare of family members, shouts in from the garden “Who was that, dear?” I now answer “Just Bombay Calling, love.”

I registered with a national list that was supposed to prevent cold calling. It worked for a while, cutting off fund-raising requests from registered charities, but I hadn’t minded them. It was still mildly annoying but when it turned out to be for a worthy cause like epilepsy or animal welfare I had quite often donated.

Unfortunately the number of blatant rip-off calls seemed unaffected, indeed increasing in number, driving me wild. What particularly infuriates me is the casual assumption that I would fall for such brazen subterfuge.

As soon as I hear those empty seconds, the impulse to slam down the receiver rises in my gorge with such overwhelming pressure that the hand clutching the receiver starts to shake and my knuckles turn white.

Our daughter has two children under the age of five. So I maintain control, at no small cost, until the spiel kicks in. And sometimes it doesn’t, just leaves me tottering on a nightmare’s edge until someone at the far end of a malicious universe decides that they have tortured me enough, and rings off.

Finally I had had enough. I swore that, restrained as I had been so far for the sake of decorum, the very next caller was going to get both barrels, figuratively speaking.

So when Cheryl began her introduction I cut her off and jumped straight in with “Are you proud of the work you’re doing?”

She sounded shocked. “Mr. Martin, pride is a sin.”

That threw me. “Are you a Catholic?” I’d imagined a Moslem or a Hindu, maybe a Sikh. I was intrigued.

“Certainly Mr. Martin. Originally I came from Goa, where there are many Catholic families. According to Saint Augustine pride is the…”

“Commencement of all sin,” I broke in and completed her quote. “I am a Doctor, not a Mister. I used to lecture on comparative religions.”

“I am so sorry, Doctor Martin. I am a student myself, which is why I am doing this phone-call work. University here in India is very expensive.”

“But surely there is other work.”

“I am not pretty enough to sell myself, nor malformed enough to beg. All that I have is my voice and the power of speech.”

That put me in my place. I felt compelled to listen. We talked for over an hour. She spun me her tale and my anger was gone. I even sent her a cheque, although I didn’t tell my wife. Occasionally now she rings me up for a chat. The other calls didn’t stop, but they did diminish in number.