BSNL 3G - Advertising

When daily saas-bahu soaps decide to miss the last bus of logic and common sense and jump onto the rebirth / double roll / '27 shaadis in one life' bandwagon, we forgive them since its close to impossible to churn out new ideas once you're down 500+ episodes of a family drama. People are accustomed to swallowing most of the daily drama crap anyway, so nobody complains. They don't have to fear competition since everyone else is in the same boat.

In the advertising world, however, you need to stay sharper than Gillette Mach 5 (I didn't have a better comparison to make here, sorry *insert sad smiley face*). While Airtel and Virgin Mobile make sure their advertisements are the cream of the entire lot, Vodafone sticks to playing cute and Idea is shinning with "What an Idea, Sirji!". BSNL, on the other had, is more than happy eating cowdung by the side of the road.

Be it the "My friend Rahul" advertisement or the badly Photoshoped "Lightning fast" bore, BSNL refuses to get it into its thick skull, that just parading Deepika Padukone on screen does not make an impact on the audience, unless you're selling soap.

The levels of dumb-idity (yes, BSNL advertisements have influenced the creation of a new term) of the "My friend Rahul" advertisement sent me into shock mode. What an advertising joke!
Let's run it through an "Impression Jamanewala Test" to see how it fares in the real, sensible world:
a) If I really wanted to impress my siblings, I'd buy them a PS3. Letting them play games on my cell phone is passe and CHEAP!
b) Watching a movie with your girlfriend on a cellphone sends across a "I blew all my money on this cellphone so I can't take you to the movies for a few years" signal or "You're just not worth taking to the movies" signal.
Movie in Theater = Romantic.
Movie on Cellphone = Moronic. Cheap. Lame. Screen is too small, if you hadn't noticed already.
c) If my employee made a video call to me, while in the midst of a presentation he was supposed to be making, I'd fire his sorry butt and hire him again just so that I could fire him again for his guts! (Repeat procedure until satisfied or bored)
d) Parties need speakers. When I say speakers, I mean those that are NOT ATTACHED TO YOUR PHONE! They have to exist independently and should preferably be one foot tall or more.

In short, the advertisement sends across a clear cut signal saying "We cater to the chindi and we do it in style". Although the features offered by BSNL 3G might be spectacular (muffled giggle), the advertisement is a giant FAIL! Then again, it is BSNL.

Do Drugs make you STUPID?

It might have been the drugs or it might have been the bad monsoon this year. Whatever the cause, you know that you are a symbol of stupidity when you get caught doing drugs (who gets caught doing charas and ganja dammit!?) in a freakin shopping mall.

Like most talents, stupidity too shall not go unpunished. Which means - Sushant Mondkar, 20, Emanuel Minadi, 20, Danish Zaidi, 21, Abhimanyu Thapar, 20, Aditya More, 18, Rohit Ramchandran, 18, Amit Pawar, 19, Kunal Wadekar, 20, and Slayton Pinto, 18 are in BIG TROUBLE.

Its wonderful that the Special Task Force commandos have finally nabbed these dangerous students who, in DCP P P Mutiyal's own words "are good students who secure over 90 per cent in college exams.”

Hiranandani Gardens is safe once again, especially from the pollution hazards caused by the smoking, I suppose.

I would also like to thank the media for making a fine example out of them. Nothing like ruining lives to give you a good night's sleep, ainnit?

God's Wicked Neat Sense of Humor

Its mid-September and my blog was dying from a lack of posts. So, I decided to have mercy on it and update. I tend to show more mercy towards non-living things rather than the ones that can turn around and bite me.

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Roadside preachers. Well, there are two kinds of roadside preachers. The first kind influenced this post and the second kind is influencing this one. The first kind steers clear of people like me, because they think I won't mind killing them and going to hell if that's what it takes to shut them up. Of course, they are absolutely correct. The second kind, however, is fearless. They aren't afraid of death because they have THE WORD OF GOD with them, which is sad, because that's exactly what is pushing people miles away from the Word of God.

Last May, minutes after I got the news about my friend passing away in a tragic bike accident, I decided I needed some fresh, polluted air to clear my head a bit. Now this friend isn't particularly close. I knew him for some eight months in person and a year or so from Orkut. He's the only guy in our group who is as insane about tattoos and anime as I am, and I'm naturally protective of the artistically talented. Coming to the main point, we had all spent an entire week begging and praying that he bounce back. Even though the doctors said that there's only a 5% chance, we were licking up every last bit of hope in that 5% (read: human nature). I took a walk down the colony road when some women (supposedly from Bangalore) stopped me. At first, I assumed that they needed directions, but boy was I wrong.

One lady thrust a pamphlet into my hand and started talking about God and sin and the bible. She churned out truckloads of information that I had been listening to over the years at Catechism class and from pious relatives. None of it sunk in. At that moment, all I wanted to to was grab her and smash her blabbering head into a sidewalk, until it shut up. Of course, that wasn't a viable option since
a) there was no sidewalk
b) I was outnumbered
&
c) I was really expecting, from every corner of my heart, that by some weird heavenly miracle, he would come back. If God could do it to Lazarus, He could do it to anyone. So I obviously didn't wanna tick God off by beating up His fanclub. I just smiled and walked away, leaving the lady very satisfied with herself, thinking she changed somebody's life. A few days later, when the funeral was done and over with, I wanted to claw all of those pretty roadside preachers to death.

See, preacher people, the light of God maybe shining in your life or maybe your stars are just treating you well at the moment, but there are people out there who are going hurricane Hanna, Fay and Cristobal in their lives and you have no right to interrupt their misery with your 'happy-happy-joy-joy' routine. Those who have to come, will find you. Please stop finding us or you will find a decent number of unpleasant experiences to share at your next meet.

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If you are a concerned friend or relative, I'd request you stay away from this particular topic when I'm around or 'bad things will happen to you'.

Mumbai Police & Priorities

The Mumbai Police sure has its priorities set straight. Burglars, murderers and rapists might as well kick off their shoes and relax. The Mumbai Police will not bother about you since “they’re running short on the taskforce necessary” to put you behind bars or even harass you in tiny ways. Right now, their hands are tied by a better source of entertainment – namely the youth.

The recent IC Colony issue is an example which proves my point through and through. Due to a complaint filed by a resident of the ‘206 Last Bus-stop’ area, the police have been patrolling the area ever so faithfully, every evening, driving couples and college groups away from their favorite hangout spot, because some couples supposedly ‘make-out’ in the open.

Hence, the police have taken it upon themselves to run up and down the area, day in day out, to make sure that couples and college students are driven into shadier corners that might prove to be a risk to their own safety. That isn’t their concern for the police though, since murderers and rapists seem to never be included in their ‘bad guy’s list.

Meanwhile, burglars have been doing their Diwali shopping in advance, with SEVEN robberies in a fortnight. The best excuse the police could come up with is “IC Colony is large and it takes our men over an hour to patrol the area”. This excuse is odd, since it takes me less than an hour to roam around the colony ON FOOT! The same police personnel however, manage to spring up quite often (read: less than 60minutes’ time gap) to pick on people hanging out in supposedly ‘non-hangout’ zones.

In conclusion, I’d like to applaud the police force for their exemplary performance in the ‘cracking down hard on couples and college students’ department, and I’d like to pretend that the actual anti-social elements of society will one day be brought under control after the police are done dealing with ‘other important tasks’ at hand.

PS.: I’m not in favor of extreme PDA, but I believe that couples taking walks and holding hands in quiet areas should not be harassed. As for college kids hanging out at the ‘206 Last Bus-Stop’; generations have hung out there, how dare they try to take it away from us now?! The ‘206 Last Bus-Stop’ issue will be discussed in another post. For now, stay content with these four closing sentences.

Omar Abdullah Quits -

I'll give you two major reasons why the evergreen smile has been wiped off my ever-so-unreasonably-jolly face ---
1. Omar Abdullah quit as the CM
&
2. The 500gm bar of dark chocolate has mysteriously decreased to 200gms over the past three days.

Since the latter calls for a family investigation, I'd like to talk about the former issue that isn't exactly close to home. Omar Abdullah quit as the CM. Everybody has a rough idea about what happened. If you don't, go here. Don't bother to ask me because I will have brainwashed myself into believing that I never read the paper today and the world is still polygonal in shape, by the time you comment.

From what people have said and from what I've heard, Omar Abdullah was making himself useful. Kashmir is a complicated place with a gory history, a blood soaked present and an equally 'bright red' future. All said and done, he is supposed to be a good guy. Then, this scandal comes along and he resigns, until the matter is resolved (read: indefinitely).

Now comes the important question:
DO WE CARE?

Frankly speaking, (beyond a tub-full of sympathy) we don't give a damn about most things that aren't directly related to us. Do we care whether a politician is a rapist or a murderer or a serial killer or a rabid dog chewing at the bones of the poverty stricken? NO - WE DON'T!

If a politician has one hundred thousand murder cases pending in the court, but he manages to get your younger brother into a medical college, you will forgive him all his sins (although it is not upto you to forgive him), you will consider him a good man, a great man even! WHY? Because he is USEFUL! Fine, let us consider non-personal gains. Same politician gets the street lights in your neighborhood fixed so that your mothers and sisters get home safely, same politician improves the water supply problem in your neighborhood, same politician builds a new bus-stop ---- YOU WILL GLORIFY THIS MAN NO MATTER WHAT HE IS ACCUSED OF! (Its human nature, don't be too hard on yourself.)

Similarly, Omar Abdullah showed signs of being a useful politician to the nation. He 'might' have done SOMETHING for this country (which is going to the dogs, being run for the dogs, by other big, powerful, stinking dogs).

The point is that all politicians have power. Hence, we should close our eyes and assume that none of them will be carried to heaven by a fleet of angels in a carriage made of feathers. No matter what we do or who says what, humanity is stuffed with corrupted scum with the creamiest part being politicians. We can only hope for corrupted politicians who will do "something" good for the country, once in a while, rather than striving for "pure politicians" (funny no?) and kicking out the ones that get into trouble because they were too busy doing good things to remember to cover their tracks.

Therefore, we should all close our eyes for two minutes and ask God to (yes, I'd like the atheists to stop reading here) get Omar Abdullah out of trouble, as long as he will be damn useful to the progress of this country (in a good, non-sarcastic way), irrespective of whether he is guilty or innocent, and IF he IS guilty, then he can rot in hell for the rest of eternity, after he dies and is no longer useful.

P.S.: We could use some goodlooking politicians and I don't mean Govinda.