Callers wanted to chat with Sai Pallavi or compliment her on her performance.

Immediately after hit movie Amaranthstarring Sivakarthikeyan, hit theaters on Deepavali, Vaageesan VV, a student from the city, found himself inundated with unexpected phone calls. Oddly enough, he has no connection to the film or its cast.

It all started with a scene that barely lasts a few seconds in the movie. In it, heroine Sai Pallavi throws a crumpled piece of paper with her phone number written on it to lead actor Sivakarthikeyan. Although one of the numbers is not legible, Mr. Vaageesan says it was his number displayed on the screen. This triggered spontaneous calls from strangers.

The first phone calls were enough for him to realize what was in store for him. Callers wanted to chat with Sai Pallavi or compliment her on her performance. Overwhelmed by the number of calls, Vaageesan put his phone on silent on the night of the festival.

“The next morning, I woke up to over 100 missed calls and several voicemails from unknown numbers in India and even abroad. The calls continued the next day. Some callers, confusingly, thought the number belonged to Indu Rebecca Varghese, the real-life wife of late Major Mukund Varadarajan, on whose life the film is based,” he says.

To make matters worse, someone saved Vaageesan’s number as ‘Vaageesan Indu Rebbbica VV’ on Truecaller, a caller ID app, further encouraging strangers to contact him. Unable to cope with the increasing number of unknown calls and messages, he tried to contact the film’s director Rajkumar Periasamy and lead actor Sivakarthikeyan by sending a message on social media explaining that the phone number used in the film was his.

“We haven’t heard back from them yet. Since the calls keep coming in, I have to put the phone on silent mode. I am worried that I may miss an emergency call or an important message from family members or friends. I’ve been using this number for two years — it’s linked to my bank accounts and given to many contacts. I can’t afford to give it up,” he says.

For more than three days, Vaageesan has refused calls from numbers not in his contact list. “My number even appeared on Instagram feeds, reaching more people. I took up the issue with Airtel, my service provider, but they said that it will not be possible to block incoming calls unless they are from a marketing source,” he said.

Confirming that the issue was reported by Vaageesan to customer care, a senior employee of the telco said that the company was in the process of responding to the customer. Asked if there were similar complaints from others, he said no other customers had highlighted such a problem. “If there is an abnormally high number of calls to a certain number, the system will detect it and send an alert to the technical team. There has been no such input as of now,” he said.

Incidentally, Vaageesan has not seen the film. His introduction to the heroic life of the Ashok Chakra recipient came only through Instagram reels after the film came out. And of course, the unsolicited phone calls.