Here’s a short story built around the phrase Arjun had enabled the call barring feature on his father’s phone three years ago.
The nurse ran past him. “Your father’s oxygen levels dropped. He tried to call you.”
Arjun stared at his phone screen. Three missed calls. All from the barred number. All silenced by the very wall he had built to protect his father.
Arjun clutched the phone. The feature that was meant to bar the world had barred the only voice that mattered.
Later, the nurse handed him Nandan’s phone. On the screen, still glowing, was a half-typed text message, autocorrect mangling the words: “son, i am scared. please unblock me.”
It wasn’t out of cruelty. His father, Nandan, had entered the early stages of dementia, and the spam calls had become a torment—fraudsters promising lottery winnings, fake banks demanding OTPs, and telemarketers selling immortality in a bottle. Each call left Nandan confused, sometimes in tears. So Arjun barred all incoming numbers except his own, his mother’s, and the family doctor’s. Peace returned.