However, apart from the usual things about cellphones that bug me that can be encompassed within the realm of violation of cell phone manners, that probably are a massive pain for you as well, there is also this new thing about caller tunes that just brings out the monster within me, and a phlegmatic, bespectacled, timid, puny pony tailed IT industry engineer metamorphoses into an angry, vitriol spewing extremist who would make even the Ayatollah seem like a school playground bully in comparison.
Caller tunes, introduced as a relatively new fad are supposed to be a means of expression for the person who one is calling, and hence you get to listen to some song or some piece of music that the other person wants you to listen to. Hence, depending on whom I would be calling, I would get a chance to listen to Where’s the party tonight? to Shine on you crazy Diamond, and as expected, there would be some songs that I would like to listen to, some I wouldn’t mind listening to, some that would mildly irritate me and others that would make me wish I hadn’t been born at all.
It is the last category of songs that have been turned into caller tunes, that make my blood bol. I don’t even know the names of the songs that are playing, but I do know that the latest pseudo donkeys that go ‘club-hopping’ and ‘partying’ consider them as their anthem of the fortnight, and would probably then forget about those songs forever after that.
But before they forget, they tarnish the memories and leave indelible scars in the aural cavities and memory sections of us good old folk who don’t want to listen to that crap, and regretfully do have memories that remember more things than they should, on most occasions.
Now I understand it if YOU would like to listen to a particular song when the phone rings, and that is why you have the new age polyphonic caller tunes to take care of that very situation. However it seems unfair for ME to listen to whatever it is that YOU think I should listen to. It is almost as if you are imposing your will on someone who is unwilling, and that is not fair.
I hope that cell phone companies keep this in mind or that someone comes up with something innovative so that WE can hear what song we want to, rather than the song our callee wants to. It makes for more pleasant waiting periods during the brief time that the phone rings.
For a brief month, I had a caller tune too. It was the title song from the movie ‘Swades’, which is among one of my favourite Hindi movies. I have hence disabled it, a significant time before I actually penned down this post.
