All others, whose names I have not mentioned in the above post, no offense meant, I just typed in a few names. If you know the meaning, please feel free to respond.
Regarding the Roja and plywood shop owner story, this has to do with a certain IF member who went to Madras, confident that she knew the phone numbers of two other IFians by heart and so did not need to write them down. So off she went and she dialed a number and it was answered by a man. She went on the offensive promptly and asked him to call her friend. He said there was no such person there, she asked him who he was and he told her it was a plywood shop.
On a side note, there used to be a plywood shop near Sun Theater in Teynampet. Does it still stand there, on the road, across from the Deaf School, which I used to pass when I took No. 11 bus to Mount Road from T. Nagar? I think it was called Mohd. Aboobacker and Company.
Anyway, to come back to our story, our fearless IF member called the same number again and again, and told him that she had the right number and asked him to call her friend again. The poor man tried protesting, but what could he do against our friend, who can make even the Customs and shipping guys in Singapore and Chennai quake in their shoes? At one point, the man doubted his own phone number, and his sanity, because she told him it was definitely her friend's number and he needed to check his number! She ended up making the poor man wonder if he was really a plywood shop owner and if he wasn't the friend's husband in disguise. Eventually, the story goes, he promised to get the moon, stars, anything, if only our IF friend would stay off the line.
Btw, there has been some embroidery work done on this story because I had forgotten some of the details, and I tried going back to find the original story, but didn't find it (partly because I couldn't remember the time frame in which it took place!)
