Scratch and wonder

When you travel Indian Airlines there are no surprises.

The flight takes off an hour late - and of course there are no proper announcements.

The air hostesses are middle-aged, frumpy and despite years of experience don't know how to apply their lipstick.

While other airlines take exactly 30 seconds to show you the safety procedure, that too as the plane is taxiing on the runaway, IA takes the long route. The air hostesses limply fling their arms back and forth showing you the emergency exits (like kids standing in the very back of P.T. class, pretending to do the exercises).

Should there actually be an emergency I bet the IA crew would be the first ones down the chute...

Anyways, the point is there is a little surprise on its flights - out of the little plastic packets which holding the napkins and cutlery comes this little 'scratch card'. The purpose of this card is unclear - you don't stand to win anything. And this is what it says:

"Janki and Meera are Raju's wives. Shobha is Meera's stepdaughter. How is Janki related to Shobha?"

Scratch and you find the answer: "Mother".

What kind of thinking could be going into producing this 'food for thought' in addition to the food on the tray ( the only area where IA is actually superior to private airlines).

a) Bigamy is illegal in India. Raju, being a Hindu, cannot have two wives! 

b) Couldn't we just have questions like "What is the capital of Uttaranchal"?

c) Shouldn't someone be pulled up for wasting money on useless initiatives like this (scratch cards are not cheap to print !)

The first sentence is a dead giveaway. If anything, IA should be called stupid for making up such a ridiculously easy question. OK - so we all have choices and don't really have to fly Indian Airlines.

Unless like some people, the government pays for your tickets. In that case, happy scratch card collecting!

Crazy banaya isne

I didn't know what it was with this song, but it was everywhere. The movie was a resounding flop but 'Aashiq banaya aapne' was a major hit. It was in fact the top selling Hindi film soundtrack at that moment.

And I was sick of it.

There was this new trend of hit-songs from flop-films. Woh Lamhe was one such example - but that still was a catchy tune.

My personal favourite is Aashayein from Iqbal.
Kuch karne ki ho aas aas
Kuch armaan dil ke paas paas
Aashayein, aashayein.

Both the lyrics and the tune are fantastic. Of course, so was the film.

No escape
The reason why songs like Aashiq banaya aapne are inescapable is that not only do you hear it being played over and over on FM radio, there are folks who inflict it on you as their 'caller tune'. (What is known as a 'ringback tone' in many markets). Airtel launched Caller Tunes - they then expected it to be a small but significant market - around Rs 100 crore a year. Value-added services today (excl. SMS which also gets tagged onto this category) contribute some Rs 1000 crore to the kitty of operators - ringback tones, ringtones, wallpaper and games downloads. The reason ringback tones are such a huge hit? They are technology neutral. Of course, they are also a great way of finding out about the person - for example I heard 'Karma Chameleon' as the ringtone of one person which pretty much confirmed many of the things I thought about him. I don't know what to think with people who have MJ as their tone, and with someone who makes me endure 'Bheege bheege yaadein' doesn't deserve to be talked to. Then, Orange introduced sms tones.

I never thought people would pay 30 bucks a month for the pleasure of playing music instead of the regular 'tring tring' but who knew? Logic and reason don't operate in the mobile market, we otherwise kanjoos Indians will fork out small bits of cash for just about anything.

According to a report on the BSNL website
It is estimated that 20-25 per cent of the 56-million mobile subscribers in India are paying for ring-back tones and downloading ring tones. The 20-25 per cent growth every month again shows how popular such applications have become. People are willing to shell out nearly Rs 30 a month for ring-back tones, with Rs 15 for the initial download and Rs 9 for each ring tone download!

This explosive growth has contributed to the bottomline of operators in India, who are targeting 7 per cent of their total revenue from downloads in the next two to three years. The way it's making enough revenues (or profits whichever is apt) for the mobile service providers,  don't think the song-for-ringtone scheme should gall us at all.

Coming back to the Irritant
But the song "aashiq banaya" was playing everywhere and everytime ..was irritating. and specially when they played the remix .. it sucked to the core. These days for a song to click, the lyrics must be meaningless, the voice pathetic, the raag totally distorted...that's their formula and we can't really blame them...There is a part of the youth audience who has no knowledge of music but which listens to it...And as history has seen it, these would pass...but undoubtedly, the everlasting ones are the melodies of yester years.

I have believed and always will that despite expert analysis which consitutes to 99 % of the causative factors in success, the 1% luck factor gets the better end of everything. Now just think about this--in a hostel where everyone was crazy 'about the song...and you get to hear it on every floor--finally took a stand when someone started playing it at 2:40am. It was everywhere, in the gym, at traffic jams, caller tunes, ringtones music shops. Why was the song so hypnotic?

While some may believe 'phone sirf baat karne ke liye hota hai', others obviously believe it's a jukebox. And aashiq banaya aapne is what gets their booty shakin'... Sigh!

Gizmos ki pyaas hai badi

Pepsi has hitched its brand to the 'gizmofy yourself' bandwagon. Their new sales promo features advertising on FM radio that goes something like this:

"That new girl in my class Jessica, she's taken the entire hard disk of my heart. When she speaks, lagta hai Ipod baj raha hai... " etc etc.

I am sure some complex research would have thrown up that technology is the coolest thing going for teens. Especially boys.

The promo asks you to peel off the wrapper from the PET bottle and sms the number printed there to a short code service like 8243. Everyone gets free wallpapers and ringtones (I'm guessing 'Oye Bubbly' and Pepsi theme wallpapers). Once you collect 100 points you get to download mobile games ; the lucky ones may win iPods, PS2s and so on.

That's what I call 'piggyback marketing'. Instead of these gizmo wallahs having to spend money on developing the market, megabrands seeking to associate themselves with what's cool' are doing the job for them!

Good buy
I am in fact amazed at the number of companies giving away free iPods - there's McDonalds and the newspaper brands I can recall offhand but there are more. On the other hand, I dropped by at 'Mani Electronics' - one of the largest electronics retailers in the city (housed in a 3 storey building and they were 'out' of iPods.

Is it selling like hotcakes? Or are the electronics shop just too busy selling 'white goods' - TVs, fridges and microwaves - to the Great Indian Upper Middle Class?

Frankly, their range of gizmos is woeful - abt 15 models of digicams and handycams, two dozen mobile phones, a dozen MP3 players. None of the buzz you get when you go to Singapore or Tokyo or even Malaysia where electronic outlets offer you a veritable feast of goodies. In every which colour, shape, style and known/unknown brand.

In digicams for instance the shop does not even stock brands such as Fuji and Nikon. Only Canon, Kodak, Sony and Samsung - with a single model of Sony thrown in for good effect. It's like going to a saree shop where you have maal in just 5 prints and 6 colours!
The grey market remains far more exciting to buy from (the dealers there may not wear ties but they know their stuff inside out and have a far wider range).

Guess it will take a few years before we as a country are well and truly gizmofied as far as real world retailing goes. Meanwhile gizmo-lovers are busy shopping for bargains online.

According to a survey done by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) 74% of those who bought gadgets online were between 18 and 35 years. The biggest buyers were in the 26-35 age groups which accounted for 48 per cent of buys.

Clearly these are the folks stuck to their office computers for the most part of the day. The kind of folks who may never have gone out into the real world to shop in the first place!

According the the report, Rs 84.4 crores worth of Electronic Gadgets was sold online in 2009-10 with Rs 119 crores expected to be sold in 2011-12.

Technology products like laptops, MP3 players, mobile phones, digital cameras and pen drives are very popular with online shoppers primarily because of multiple promotions via multiple sellers offering similar products. This enables buyers to comparison-shop and get the best product at the least price.

Ye dil definitely mange more probably in structures with keyboards and earphones ! Baazee.com (Now ebay India) had more variety to sell than the official markets most of the time. So yes, definetly online buying is growing. Update: It's reported that there are almost 2 crore pieces of ipod sold worldwide.

Yes, yeh pyaas is definitely witnessing an upswing thanks to the bludgeoning middle upper class, but it will definitely be sometime before we take to technology in a big way. We have only just started integrating the internet into our respective lifestyles.........

Internet ki jai ho! Now stop goofing and get back to work.

Give the girl a break !

This report published prominently at the bottom page of a leading daily shows that sense - and sensitivity - is a commodity still in short supply.

'LSE freshers on Lewinsky alert' says the headline of a story from London filed by one Vijay Dutt.

Monica Lewinsky is joining the London School of Economics for a Master's in social psychology. She is in all likelihood attending the freshers' foam party. The freshers are excited and, at the same time bracing themselves to deal with the prospect of living in the vicinity of the former White House intern - whose cigar sharing habits with Bill Clinton made headlines in 1998.

There's more crap to follow:
Ever since the news of Lewinsky joining LSE broke, many male students at the institute's compact campus are reportedly claiming to be 'married', 'handcuffed' or 'attached'.

The picture being painted - that of a nymphomaniac, man-eater. Why? Because at an impressionable 22 years of age she had a brief affair with the most powerful man in the world. A man with the solid reputation of having a roving eye, one who has been accused of sexual harassment by more than one woman.

But do you see headlines like 'Clinton visiting Oxford - undergraduate girls beware?'. No sir. Whereas poor Monica Lewinsky, 12 years after her little liaison, is unable to live down the pervy image.

In the interim she suffered by losing her privacy - and self esteem. She put on over 75 pounds ( although that helped her in a way - she became a spokesperson for Jenny Craig, the weight loss company).

Then she tried selling her own line of purses and accessories (www.therealmonica.com) and yeah, she also released a biography called 'Monica's Story'. But it didn't exactly set the bookshops on fire - who wanted to hear her story? The cigar and the 'blue dress' are what sum up Monica to most people. How many really want to give her a chance to move on in life?

Who's looking at you, kid?
A student of Indian-origin told HT he was hoping she would concentrate on his white male contemporaries. "Anyway I am only 23," he said. "Most students here are much younger to her. She should be looking for suitors outside the campus." Maybe at the diplomats at the Australian High Commission, opposite the LSE, he added helpfully.

Really! The most hilarious bit is our desi dhakkans reeling under the misconception that Monica would be looking forward to dating them. I mean, who's interested anyways? Not even women their own age.

Just because Monica gave Bill Clinton a blow job, doesn't mean she'll do it for the guy who sits next to her in class. But will that guy understand that and treat her with the respect that any fellow-student deserves? To judge her based on her class participation and not what she said or did 12 years ago in the White House? I very much doubt it.

And yes, she was given a tin of English spotted dick pudding as a farewell gift by friends (thankfully, HT clarifies that spotted dick pudding is made from boiled hard fatty tissues around kidneys of sheep mixed with dry fruits). Well, it's the kind of thing friends do - no deeper meaning needs to be attached to it.

"Maybe I'll meet my husband there (in London) and have kids, " she says. But any 32 year old single woman could have made a statement like that.

I sincerely hope the desi LSE students realise, humming "Monica - oh my darling" when she passes by is really not cool. Letting her just be, is.