This is an excerpt from my diary, dated August 24, 2009. It was the era of DVDs and Sony Ericsson Walkman phones and 1GB pen-drives. We had just discovered what torrent engines were, and how slow and tiring (but fulfilling) it was to download DVDRip movies by free riding on college WiFi. The Nokia 6600 phone was vintage now, and every phone had a memory card slot of its own. And there was this new thing called the CALLER TUNES! Apparently the advertisements claimed that caller tune was the invention that would change your world and make it better! So, he is what I thought about it back then.)

“Where has the simple tring-tring of the phone disappeared? What’s with all the dogs barking, frogs croaking and babies brawling on every phone? And the caller tunes? Arrghhh!!!

Let me tell you how easy it is to fix your caller tune. When you hear a song and want to have it as your caller tune, you first have to check whether it’s there in the database of your phone company or not. For that you either have to install a Rs 30 per monthly-based scheme which alerts you about the latest songs and their corresponding numbers or you have to ask the customer care people. Now these ‘Customer Care’ people are such dumb-heads that you will have to repeat your question atleast thrice to make them understand what you want. So after banging your head for half an hour with them, you get the song code. Then you go for the caller-tune installation process. Press 1 for Hindi, press 2 for Gujarati, press 3 for English, press 4 for Hebrew, press 5 for Swahili… After that, press 1 for Bollywood, press 2 for Hollywood, press 3 for Kollywood, press 4 for Qollywood… After about 15 minutes at the rate of Rs 6/min and after all the pressing, you finally get the caller tune. That amounts to 30+90=120 rupees. Now listen to this, when your friends call you, they are not always in a happy mood (maybe because they are calling you.) So when they hear such a chirpy, bubbly caller tune every time they call you, they get fed up and stop calling you while at the same time you are thinking that your friends are getting so happy-happy listening to your caller tune and your 120 bucks are very purposefully utilized.”

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