Value Added Services (18+)

There is nothing more stupid than the Value Added Services  (VAS) offered by Mobile Companies. Why is it they are able to offer calls at 1/2 paisa. 1/5 paise and now FREE. It is because, revenue from talk-time is of least significance. Neither am I interested in researches nor am I a journalist to furnish any data to support that statement. I am also plain lazy to find out the numbers at this moment. But one thing I can tell you is that Telecom companies and their partner VAS services providers are born to fuck you and the Indian Telecom subscriber fraternity at large. 


Earlier this month, Sriram became the Indian Idol. Great. 2-3 days of news coverage on jobless TV channels, he went back to his school, sang a couple of songs, waved at everyone, traffic jam for one day in Bowenpally and then, that's it. Over. Two months later, nobody remembers him apart from random degree college girls who have joined his community on Orkut. In the process, did you know that the mobile company made crores and crores of rupees @ Rs. 3 per SMS. And we had even chief ministers asking people to vote for that singing competition. My question is how the fuck does any  nincompoop with a mobile phone watching TV at home know if someone is a good singer? Ninety percent of them can't tell Kumar Sanu from Abhijeet. If it is a God damn singing competition, let experts be the judge and not any random dude who never buys music legally. And no matter who wins Indian Idol, it is the Telefuckingcom company that is winning in the end. Public Voting is a fraud. It is a huge money laundering fraud. It is a lottery ticket with no prize announcement. 

Added to their already dirty fucked-up atrociously detestable character traits, News Channels make you 'THINK' and give out your 'OPINION' on SMS polls. Same shit as above applies here. They are sucking away money from us. It may not make a difference to you or me at all if you send just one SMS. But, SMSes from crores of people do make a difference, in their revenue. Here you feel happy that your view got counted and a suit-clad neatly combed pig thanked you for sending the SMS. But that owner guy and  his Telecom partner is laughing his ass off to the bank. My question is, why provide phukat-ka-revenue to anyone? 

They also offer something called Voice-Portal which is a truckload of elephant shit. Call a recording machine at Rs 6 per minute and no purpose at all. Which mindless prick wants to listen YEAH FUCKING LISTEN to songs at Rs. 6 per minute? Imagine a poor uneducated worker who recharges for Rs.50 every month, by mistake dials to that number owing to the promotional SMS, or that recorded call and listens to the song, imagine the shock he experiences after he checks his balance later. I have seen a man like that. A painter who painted my cousin's house experienced the same. He had a bad mood for five days after that horrible experience. Voice-portal is a cleverly designed trap to dig people's wallets with cellphone-tower sized dicks and leave  large holes behind. 

In the name of Exciting Ringtones, Caller Tunes, Cool Wallpapers, Hot Babes, Vastu Alerts,  Cricket Alerts (15-mins late), Stock Market tips  (FAILED), Beauty Tips (WTF,  Yeah!), Health Tips, Film Gossip,  Love Tip (Yeah, there are people who believe in Love tips, dicks.), News Alerts (WOW, as if TV wasn't enough) and many such good-for-wiping-your-ass-if-they-were-at least-paper packages, what happens is that you get jerked off  rupee by rupee. 

Anyway, these are my thoughts, if you want to let me know your thoughts, you can SMS me on  ......... :P

- Deepak Karamungikar

Hike!

- Deepak Karamungikar

Indian TV Advertising

I thought only Sajid Khan could make highly disgusting films. But Indian advertising industry has been giving him stiff competition in the last few years. With over 200 TV channels and their penetration increasing faster than ever, ad agencies have a lot of work to do. But lack of any creativity whatsoever has resulted in the most disgusting advertisements being made. 

Taking the cake in retardedness are the FMCG ads. If Shah Rukh Khan's Pepsodent ad is any indicative of the creativity in Indian advertising, we sure are in neck-deep shit. Then you have the 'washing power' ads where they give lessons on common sense, show children as dogs, etc. Also joining the league are the ones who sell fascination for fair skin. Whether it is Shahid Kapoor's Vaseline, John Abraham's Garnier and Shah Rukh Khan's Dumb and Handsome or the seven hundred odd of women's products ads, there is no trace of sense anywhere. I am particularly disgusted with the fairness cream ad where the guy passes the interview after he applies the cream. Also the bathroom ad with multiple mirror reflections of Shahid Kapoor is a blood boiler. If fairness had anything to do with confidence, 800 test wickets would have been a fantasy. 

My next problem is the health drink league. The biggest problem with them is that they sell sugary shit and call it health drink. That height research done in two buildings ad, the boy hanging all the time and the idea that by drinking Horlicks, Complan, Boost or Bournvita one passes all exams is blood boiling. Cliched shit. I categorically abhor the two characters, Science (a robot) and Nature (grass covered man) which appear in the Bournvita++ ad. That ad is a sign of urinary tract infection in the brain.

I have a strict zero-tolerance policy towards Pepsi and Coke ads, especially the Pepsi ads with Ranbir Kapoor in it. Plastic Kaif's Slice ad is the worst of them all though. Akshay Overpaid Overrated Dumb Kumar's mobile phone ads where he plays in the kitchen and laughs as if an earthworm is crawling into his asshole is a serious insult to our intelligence. Also, almost everything which has Shah Rukh Khan in it, has no creativity. With this being the state of affairs in Indian TV advertising, I see no light at the end of this stinking tunnel. This list is looooooong. It can go on forever. But this post is not a review of all the ads on Indian TV. It's just a reminder that the ad industry need a creative re-structuring.

If you look back at the last decade, what surprises me most is that except for a couple of brands like Vodafone (even though they overdid ZooZoos), Fevicol, Tata Safari  and HappyDent, there are no creative ads. Yes. Creativity is dead. People sitting in these Mumbai ad agencies have their brains marinated in piddle and the result is the dumbfuckery that we have to put up with every TV show. Also, I have been in advertising for five years, not from the agency's side but from the clients' side. I have noticed that people who can make ads are not in agencies and those who are in agencies shouldn't be making ads.

To get an idea about what the standard of creativity in advertising  is in some of the international agencies, have a look at these videos.

Now you judge for yourself, don't most of our Indian ad agencies suck at their job? I think they do. 

- Deepak Karamungikar

Thank you all...

What I did today is going to leave my heart heavy for a long time. I have just taken my short story blog, 'Stochastic Chronology' off the internet. It has been quite a journey from 'No Tears Yet' in Feb 2009 to 'Alighted Doves' in Aug 2010. I received compliments for some of my stories and have been criticized for some. There were bloopers too. It was all in the game. I have always strived to tell good stories in the best way possible. Ram Gopal Varma, one of my inspirations, once wrote on his blog, 'There are no bad stories, only bad storytellers'.

19 months and 19 stories later, after a lot of crests and troughs, the time has come. My short stories will now be published as an anthology under the name 'Love at first sight and other stories' (tentative title).  I feel happy that the stories will reach out to a wider audience but also feel sad that they will not be accessible online anymore. And thus, http://desibert.blogspot.com will not be the same anymore.

It excites me that my name will soon appear in the 'Author' column in the library management software but I am also nervous. One person who has done a brilliant job of keeping me encouraged is my best friend Durga Ram. If it wasn't for him, Stochastic Chronology would have been long buried. Also, the people who have given me immense confidence are...

1. Achala Yamini
2. Haritha Burra
3. VP Srinivas 
4. Venkat Parthasarathy
5. Suhas Inamdar, Subodh Inamdar and Sanjay Indamdar
6. Anirudh Reddy Koppula
7. Varun Reddy Sevva (IIM ka Sarkari Babu)
8. Meena Sunderrajan
9. Fazil Biabani
10. Lalli, Gunni and Soni
11. Kaushik Sudheendra and Omkar Das
12. Lalit Aditya
13. Kamal Rathi
14. Ravi Reddy Kallem
15. Pavan Atukuri
16. Sumitra Chakravarti 

Special thanks to all of you and many others who have given your valuable inputs over these months. 

(List is not exhaustive. Apologies to those whose names I couldn't think of while writing this post.)

The book will be available in about 30-45 days from now. While I am confident that it will do well, I request all of you to get a copy and recommend this book to your friends, cousins, etc. ( I have done an MBA in Marketing. Had to say this :P ) Thank you once again.

However, the ramble on ECHOES will go on as usual with my thoughts and observations on life, people and almost everything around us. 

Love,

Deepak Karamungikar

Schools

Bore No. 1

Some people just bore you to death. Be it their conversation, their jokes and sometimes just the face. It is very difficult to tolerate certain boring people in life. Even among your relatives, there are a few cousins who you look forward to meet but on the other hand, there are a few who you wish never came home. However, certain things in life are unavoidable and boring people are a part of this package of life. 

Expression Bore: Boredom sometimes is evident on some faces. The moor-like look on some faces just destroys even the last drop of adrenalin in your body. No, it's not about the beauty, It is about the expression which translates into English as I-am-the-last-surviving-human-and-haven't-eaten-since-1997. One look into their eyes and gone, you spend the rest of the day in depression.

Conversation Bore: Some conversations bore you till the bones. Usually this set of people, pick up topics like, "My cousin in the US", "Real Estate prices", "Insurance Plans",etc. At office, they speak about "Organizational Excellence", "Life and times of my ex-boss", "Health Consciousness", "Calorie talk", "Human Psychology and its impact on organizational dynamics" and the see-this-pic-see-this-pic-see-this-one-too kind of shit.

Among them, there is this praise-hunting gang which is often on the prowl members of which will borrow an expression from the first para types and say things like, "I am a small man, what do I have?" for which they expect a minimum seven minute long praising and a shower of compliments which will satisfy them to the core. But, for me, they are a set of boring losers. 

Also very boring are old lost friends who you meet at a bar or a gym after a long time and they directly start with,"I am the lead for this team and we are into XYZ sucksass technology...." when you are out to have some fun. Recently, I spoke to someone on phone  who explained  to me how they completed a project despite strict time-lines. Also, note that I spoke to him after six years. FML I thought.

 

 

Social Networking Bore: This is the most annoying of all kinds. Ignoring the Orkutiyas, the ones on Facebook and Twitter can bore you to an extent that you log out. On Facebook, there are these, Underground Altaf Raja Fan Club members who end up singing and humming every song that has the word Dil, Deewana, Sanam, Mahiya, Maula and Juda and put up the videos and their friends add comments like, what-a-song-so-cuteee-lolzzz etc. I find this group extremely boring. 

Also, there are these minute to minute updaters on FB and Twitter with news like, "Just got into a bus", "Ugly Bus Driver", "Temperature 29 degrees outside", "Love is life is love is life and life is love is life is love....LOLZZZ.....nice na...." kind of limpdicks. BORED of them. 

Also, extremely boring by default and by design are the finance and admin department people , men from HR dept., 8 yrs+ experienced Software Engineers (Aaarrrrgh) and the my-uncle-is-the-MLA-friend types and other such categories.

All said, I think it is in our hands not to let others bore you. I have vowed not to take shit from anyone and spoil my day to the greatest extent possible. Have you?

- Deepak Karamungikar