The Nirvik Bureau, Bhubaneswar, 17 October 2025
The Seven Phantom Calls
President Trump, never one to skip a headline, announced this week that he’s been receiving urgent midnight calls from Prime Minister Modi. These calls, he claimed, covered everything: stopping wars, lowering tariffs, and even setting oil prices like they’re ordering pizza.
Trump’s version paints Modi as the world’s busiest telemarketer—dialing up the White House at all hours, urgently seeking Trump’s sage advice on Indo-Pak relations (“Just tell ‘em you’re bigger, it always works for me!”), on tariffs (“Two tweets a day keeps competition away!”), and the price of oil (“I know a guy. Sad!”).
Meanwhile, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) responded like a strict parent catching a teenager sneaking out: “Our records show absolutely no calls were made. We have the itemized bill and a phone locked in a box!” Modi, never a fan of awkward conversations (especially with world leaders prone to spontaneous trade wars), has apparently blocked Trump’s number and switched to using emojis for all diplomatic communications.
Of course, anonymous sources—those magical unnamed insiders who know everything—claim there were actually seven calls. Seven! Enough to launch a “Modi-Trump Call of the Week” podcast, starring world leaders bickering about oil futures, Diwali greetings, and whether TikTok should be banned in Goa.
Who’s right? Is Trump hearing imaginary ringtones? Is MEA keeping peace with a government-sanctioned ‘Do Not Disturb’? Or is everyone just having fun pretending diplomacy is a game of “telephone,” where every message gets garbled until Modi is asking Trump for help with cricket scores?
Maybe it’s all true. Maybe it’s all fiction. But one thing is clear: the only thing dialed up to eleven is everyone’s ability to spin a story. In the end, no actual policy gets changed, but everyone gets to say they starred in a cross-continental soap opera, complete with missed calls, imaginary ringtones, and plausible deniability.
