The 911 operator said "Sir, hangup and never call us back."

For Indian Readers: Just like you call 100 for Fire, 101 for Ambulance etc. the number here in the US is 911

For American readers: It takes upto a year to get a phone in India, things could have changed in the recent past. You could also officially pay a little extra and get a new phone connection in 3 months.

About a year ago one of my cousins came to the US. He went to this university where I had a friend and as it would happen, I got to know a lot about his activities thro my people.

This is a true life story and I know I am going to get blasted for this... but this acctually happened.

Fall of 2004 this cousin of mine enters the US, goes to his little town and in a couple of weeks finds himself an apartment. Like most Indian grad students, he gets an apartment in a complex with a lot of Indians. He gets his utilities, cable and all that jazz. Now all he needs is a home phone.

Using his neighbours phone, he calls his local phone company and is waiting for someone to answer the call. In the meanwhile he is also flipping thro the phone book and vola he sees a number for emargency... 911. Now you have to understand that he has not lived in the country for more than a couple of weeks and does not know what the number means. Thinking that it is the number to get a phone line ASAP (just like in India), he calls the number. The operator picks up and asks him as to what went wrong... He says "Well I need a phone like immediately and the other number I called is just taking too much time.". The operator is shocked and then pissed and says "Please hangup and NEVER call us back."

The funnier part of this whole episode is that my cousin explained the call to his neighbour who sorted things out for him. My cousin also asked the neighbour to keep this between themselves. But within 24 hours I got a call from my sources about this and when I called my cousin he could not beleive that every Indian in his university had come to know about this, he then figured the laughs he got when he got introduced earlier that day to loads of new people.

Moral of the story..... aint got one, its just funny.