I was filled with nostalgia to read about the inauguration of the first subscriber trunk dialling (STD) service in south India, between Bangalore and Madras, on March 17, 1966 ( >“From the Archives”, March 17 ). Those days, a telephone was a luxury and one had to book a trunk call and then wait, often endlessly, for the call to be connected. We had to go to places like railway stations to stand in line and use the STD facility. I still remember the time when I had to wait for an hour in Calcutta to book a trunk call to speak to my family in Bangalore and then being told by the clerk that the service was unavailable. The news of the birth of my first child was through a “trunk call”.
Kudupu Karunakara,
Bengaluru
