“What’s this?” I asked my friend the inventor, “It looks like a crude mobile phone?”
“It’s an eavesdropping machine!” whispered my friend. “It’s the invention of the century! Want to try it?”
“Okay,” I said a little doubtfully and held the invention close to me ear, as my friend turned a knob on it. “There’s a lot of static,” I said.
“Turn the arrow in the direction you want. Wouldn’t you like to know what those women are saying about you?”
“Sure,” I said, turning the arrow in the direction of two middle aged women sitting nearby. I heard a buzzing sound and then their voices.
“What are they saying?” asked my inventor friend.
“Nothing nice,” I said disappointed, “The one in pink is saying that we two must be gay as we are trying to share the same phone and sitting pretty close to each other!”
“Idiots!” shouted my inventor friend, as he moved himself farther from me, then stared at the women, “Gossips, who don’t have brains! Do I look gay?”
“Quiet!” I said, “They don’t know, we’ve heard them!”
“Why don’t you point it there!”
“Where?”
“To that window up there!”
“That’s your house! And your mother is at the window!”
“Yes listen to what she’s saying, she must be talking about me!”
“Yes, she is,” I said turning the phone towards his mother at the window, “she is talking about you!”
“What’s she saying?”
“That it’s time you got yourself a job, and contributed towards the home, instead of making silly inventions!”
“My mother said that?”
“Well she spoke in Hindi!”
“Then that’s my mother alright!” said my inventor friend dejectedly.
We watched as another friend of ours walked over to us, “What’s that?” he asked.
“An eavesdropping machine!”
“You planning to market it?”
“Yes,” said my inventor friend eagerly.
“You’ll be the first inventor who will be lynched for his invention!”
“Lynched? Why?” asked my inventor friend, “Won’t people be happy to know what others are saying about them?”
“Here’s what King Solomon said about eavesdropping in the Book of Ecclesiastes, ‘Don’t eavesdrop on others-you may hear your servant laughing at you!’. I think there’s a reason God gave us limited hearing,” said my friend laughing, “He didn’t want us to get hurt listening to what we didn’t need to hear!”
We looked at the old lady at the window, and at the two women talking to each other and nodded as my inventor friend threw his invention into the garbage can.