When "Lowe" messages....

I am a single man.
I like to think that I am smart, handsome, funny, trendy and all those positive adjectives in superlative terms. My friends assure me that I might be slightly correct in my assumptions about myself if I take my nose from the clouds a bit. Unfortunately all my friends are male. That is probably why I am single....

This great friend of mine in Singapore has a girlfriend. Lets call her S. She is nice, funny and quite helpful. I caught hold of her one fine evening and told her to do something about my "single-ness". She hemmed and hawed and finally relented.

This is the deal (she said). I was supposed to think of a nickname for myself. Then she would give me a couple of phone numbers with whom I could begin sms-fraandsheep. Thereafter whatever happens is up to us.

Further pressure yielded one number. The lady apparently answered to the name of Julia. I held the cell-phone in my hand and thought up flowery lines to unleash on the hapless damsel who then would be (I hoped) duly swept off her feet, her heart would be mine, angels would sing and everyone would live happily ever after.

Three hours of deep thinking yielded these lines:
"Hi Julia, this is Neil. I had the temerity to take your number from S. How are you doing?"

I dashed off this missive and waited. And waited. And waited.
The next day I called customer service.
S checked up with her friend who denied receiving any harassing sms'es. She then figured out that she had given me the wrong number!!!!

I did not check whose number that actually turned out to be but I must admit that chances are good that "Julia" was a guy. He must have been bemused.

How bemused he could have been I can imagine. You see this happened to this friend of mine once....
Lets call him M. He is a great friend. He looks hard on the outside but is equally soft on the inside (once you get to know him better I mean). He is the type who does fifty push-ups to relax after a hard-days work and sleeps to the soothing lullaby of Metallica howling at top volume. His only problem in life was that he did not have (or ever had) any girlfriend.
Suddenly one fine day it all changed.
His cell-phone started beeping with flowery romantic sms'es every two hours. Those sms'es were REALLY flowery. You know the type which conjures up rainbows, pink hearts and butterflies.
He tried calling this number but the other person never picked up.

M started smiling. He started arguing that women were emotional and delicate creatures who needed men to protect them. He started listening to Boyzone even.

One fine day a particularly flowery sms came along. M woke me up while I was sleeping off a hangover and showed me the sms. I suggested he use my phone to check up on who the love-sick damsel was.

He dialled.
The other side picked up the phone.
M asked, "Hi this is M speaking. May I know who this is?"
(pause)
The other side returned with a manly, sheepish and coy voice answering, "Hi M. This is Mehboob speaking". (Mehboob: Urdu word, Masculine term. Loosely translated to mean a passionate lover)

M was very sad after this.

So I guess "Julia" must have been adversely affected by my missive. I don't think I will pester S again after this to "set me up"....