Soon after the blockbuster movie Amaran, starring Sivakarthikeyan, hit the theatres on Deepavali, Vaageesan V.V., a city student, found himself flooded with unexpected calls. Strangely, he has no connection to the film or its cast.
It all started with a scene that hardly lasts a couple of seconds in the film. In it, heroine Sai Pallavi tosses a crumpled piece of paper with her phone number written on it to lead actor Sivakarthikeyan. Though one of the numbers is not legible, Mr. Vaageesan says it was his number shown on the screen. This triggered spontaneous calls from strangers.
The first few calls were enough for him to realise what was in store. The callers wanted to have a word with Sai Pallavi or to compliment her on her performance. Overwhelmed by the number of calls, Vaageesan put his phone on mute on the night of the festival.
“The next morning, I woke up to more than 100 missed calls and several voice messages from unknown numbers across India and even abroad. The calls continued the following day. Some callers, confusingly, believed the number belonged to Indu Rebecca Varghese, the real-life wife of late Major Mukund Varadarajan, on whose life the film is based,” he says.
To make matters worse, someone saved Vaageesan’s number as “Vaageesan Indu Rebbbica VV” on Truecaller, a caller identification application, further encouraging strangers to reach out to him. Unable to handle the increasing number of unknown calls and messages, he attempted to reach the film’s director, Rajkumar Periasamy, and protagonist Sivakarthikeyan by sending a message on social media, explaining that the phone number used in the movie was his.
“I haven’t received any response from them yet. Since the calls keep coming, I have to switch my phone to silent mode. I am worried that I may miss an emergency call or an important message from family members or friends. I have been using this number for two years — it is linked to my bank accounts and given to many of my contacts. I can’t afford to give it up,” he says.
For more than three days, Vaageesan has been declining calls from the numbers not on his contact list. “My number has even appeared in Instagram reels, reaching more people. I took up the matter with Airtel, my service provider, but they said it would not be possible to block incoming calls unless they were from a marketing source,” he said.
Confirming that the issue was flagged by Vaageesan to the customer care, a senior employee of the telecom company said the company was in the process of responding to the customer. Asked if there were similar complaints from others, he said no other customer had highlighted any such problem. “If there is an abnormally large number of calls going to a particular number, the system will detect it and send an an alert to the technical team. There was no such input as of now,” he said.
Incidentally, Vaageesan has not seen the film. His introduction to the heroic life of the Ashok Chakra recipient came only through Instagram reels after the movie came out. And, of course, the unsolicited phone calls.
Published - November 06, 2024 10:11 pm IST
