The Hindu Business Line : Mobile ringing in numerology

THE Indian appetite for the auspicious has now extended to telephone numbers as well, with mobile numbers especially, becoming mobile in more ways than one.

"Can you give me your telephone number?" Bangalore-based Ms Deepa Ramaswamy was asked over her mobile phone by an unknown caller. Upon her refusal to relinquish her telephone number, the caller persisted. "How much (money) do you want? You name your price. Please, my numerologist has told me my life will change if I own the mobile number that you have."

Telephony companies are only too willing to oblige customers with the numbers they desire, as a persistent visitor to any customer centre will find out. And if the auspicious numbers are already taken up, would-be customers are not averse to persuading their owners to part them.

Mr Manoj Rajpal, who recently set up his mobile telephony shop in Bangalore, named `Talk Teleecom' (numberologically named) knew just what to reward his early customers with. To his good fortune, he is related to one of India's best-known numerologists, the Mumbai-based Mr Sanjay B. Jumaani, who was invited to inaugurate the shop.

"Any customer who buys a Nokia Priority Deluxe handset in the next three days gets free numerological consultation from me about how to spell his name and also which telephone number would be best for him," Mr Jumaani said, speaking to Business Line from the said shop.

This is a good deal for the customer, an ordinary consultation with Mr Jumaani costing the numerologically worked out fee of exactly Rs 3,501.

While direct sale as well as `kerb' trading in telephone numbers gathers pace among the superstitious across the country, businessmen and executives themselves are using, more and more, the services of numerologists, said Mr Jumaani."Most of my clients are highly educated intellectual people," said Mr Jumaani. From commoners (90 per cent of clientele), film and sports stars (Mr Jumaani famously changed Saurav Ganguly's shirt number from 99 to 24 and also claims to have helped refine the names of the top 20 TRP-rated television serials in the country), the practice has spread among businessmen.

The best thing to do is to change the spelling of the CEO or the name of the company, since if the captain of the ship is taken care of, the rest will follow, said Mr Jumaani. He refuses to name the CEOs he has renamed (confidentiality clause) but he says some of the Nandas, AirTel, Star Plus (for its serials) and Reliance Infocomm people have consulted him.

The dynamic industries in this respect clearly appear to be telecom and banking.

Banking executive, Mr Sanjiv, changed his name to Sanjeev and got a double promotion the next week and his wife in the family way too. "We bankers have a numerology-software - we found out that both Enron and Times Bank share the same numerological number. And both are no more," he said. "my IDBI Bank friends are scared because it too has the same number."

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