The Dukakis-Bush presidential race is currently described by wits in the US as a contest between "tweedledum and tweedledumber". Irresistibly, I was reminded of this bit of gallimaufry when news of the Karnataka telephone tapping became public. For sometime past, denizens of the Central Hall of Parliament had been remarking: "It is all the same —you are no different. Look at your performance — Samajwadi Janata Dal to National Front; four attempting to become one, ending up by being six; like cells, constantly dividing and multiplying. And now this snooping on your own side. How very like us in the ruling Congress." On the surface, it seems a reasonably accurate and also a reasonable enough observation. But as the cellular structure of the political opposition to Rajiv Gandhi is not under examination today, we cannot really tarry here. Our worry is this business of telephone snooping: What after all is it?

I am old enough to know that it is a fact of life; yet, not sufficiently knowledgeable to be able to tell how it is actually done: What do they actually do when they do it, I have always yearned (almost adolescently), to know. Do they connect some kind of a wire to our telephones and sit there for hours on end, bored beyond measure, listening to the constant static of our inefficient systems? Or do they just plug in something, and play cards while the machine does the rest?

When do they do the actual listening then? Do they take it home and listen to it for pleasure? — Long hours of leisure spent idly, as the pregnant tapes slowly unburden themselves of secrets, savoury and not. What about crossed lines then, the fate of most ordinary telephone owners? Do the telephone tappers also go through experiences like tapping someone in Jodhpur only to find an irate grain dealer of Ghaziabad cursing them on the line? And what about getting a wrong number? Is there such a thing as "tapping" a wrong number as well? All these and many similar questions arose after the Karnataka expose, which bikini style, gave us a tantalising glimpse but hid all the essential parts. When I read the lists, I wondered, who actually selected the victims and why? The union home minister had informed us, in Parliament, that tapping is done only in the country's "security interests". How, I wondered, is the country's security ensured by snooping over one Ms. An-uradha of Bangalore?

I draw great comfort from the demonstrated inefficiency of our systems: If we cannot actually run a routinely effective telephone system, then there is just no way in which we could do even a moderately efficient job of telephone snooping either. Carrying that reassurance in my mind, like a talisman; and sure in the knowledge that my telephone is tapped, I have chosen to go on the offensive. Whenever I use this foul instrument, I say the most incredibly outrageous things into it; challenging the snoopers to act. (And you would be surprised at the verbal abandon of some of the feminine parties, who catch on to the game.) Bravado, you might remark. Yet, so far the snoopers have chosen not to do anything, possibly because I am not important enough. I think it is because they are just rank inefficient.