Jalaj P. Jha

I signed up on twitter long time ago, but could never really use it, perhaps because I was never an sms fan and posting “What you are doing?” really was not for me. It was during terrorist attack in Mumbai that I first started using it to follow Arun Shanbhaag who was reporting activities at Taj Hotel from his home a few hundred metres away. This was followed by a long period of inactivity again.

A few days ago I decided to start using Twitter again to follow you know whom? The Bollywood Stars. One of my interests in the past had been reading a lot of magazines about Bollywood. These magazines are often called gossip magazines and often report facts that are just not real. So why not hear from the stars directly. Of course what they tweet would exclude all the masala stuff that magazines report like who is linked to whom, who got cosmetic surgery done, who put on weight and where

Since there are far more fake profiles than the real ones when it comes to these stars, I started with one profile which I knew was genuine, Akhishek Bachchan’s ( he himself told me ), and following the ones being followed by them and now I am following more than 50 stars. Here are a few interesting ones

Amrita Rao Her twitter profile claims that genuineness of her profile can be verified from the link on her website. Now how can one know that her website is genuine? from the link on her twitter profile page. And as per an old joke how can we verify that both are genuine? well from each others’ link. Is her profile genuine? let’s see!

Deepika Padukone Her account name is DeepikaCalling. She is the current brand ambassador for BSNL and her ads for BSNL have a catchphrase “Hindustaan bol raha hai” (India is calling). So you see her account name reflects the same. But wait! Who is PadukoneD? whom Daboo Ratnani the famous photographer is following? A fake profile it seems.

Mallika Sherawat is wearing a dress(?) with design that of US Flag, her account name ends with LA (Los Angeles?) and she is following ‘White House’ among others. This makes a story! Hey any magazine interested in hiring me as a (gossip) reporter? Her official website made in association with glamsham.com has an adsense ad on the top. Mallika is it that you didn’t pay glamsham for the site or you yourself earning from ad?

That’s all for now. Back to twitter to search more stars. Want to follow me?

My young son Heet is nowadays a fan of the Evian ad which features toddlers skating and performing tricks I am sure most of the adult skaters cannot do. Heet himself is just capable of crawling on floor, but I think he must have already made up his mind to start skating as soon as he starts walking , little knowing difference between real babies and computer generated babies.

While he is busy watching the ad that reruns in infinite loop, I am also stuck to the screen watching the face expressions of randomly chosen one of the babies. It’s a must-watch ad, which many of you might have already watched, but if you haven’t find it below.

And here is my little Heet doing his worldly tricks.

Interesting? Well many people don’t find PJ’s interesting (that’s why these are called Pakaau Jokes) but still they are interesting and thus keep floating mouth to mouth, mailbox to mailbox. Here are a few PJs. By default you will see only questions. To see the answer highlight the lines following the question (a ctrl+A key combination would work best)

Q: Which is the safest way to see a shark?
Ans: On Television….
_____________________________________
Q: What would Baby Corn say To Mom Corn?
Ans: He’ll ask:  "Where is Pop Corn?"
_____________________________________
Q: What is the full form of CNBC ???
Ans: It means….  Cartoon Network for Business Community !!
_____________________________________
Q: What is it that RAM can do but RAVAN cant?
Ans: Wear a T-SHIRT.

Q: What is it that RAVAN can do but RAM cant?
Ans: Group discussion when he is alone.
_____________________________________
Q: Why did Ram Gopal Varma made ‘Phoonk’?
Ans:  Uski Picchli ‘AAG’ ko bujhaane ke liye….
_____________________________________
Q: What do u call a 800 year old Hanuman Temple ???
Ans: MARUTI 800!!!
_____________________________________
Dharam Paaji subscribed to Hutch. But the hutch network did
not follow him.
Why?
Ans: Bcoz the Dog was afraid, ‘Kutte! Main tera khoon pee jaunga.’
_____________________________________
Q: Dada Kondake opened a Bank in the memory of his Mother’s Grandmother
i.e. Great Grandmother. What did he name the bank?
Ans: "I CHI I CHI I" Bank.
_____________________________________
Q: What is the difference between Paneer Masala and Paneer ‘Tikka’ Masala??
Ans: Simple! The Latter is Vaccinated…!!
_____________________________________

“Good Morning Sir, This is ……… calling on behalf of ……… Bank. As you are an employee of ………, our bank is offering a free for lifetime ………credit card”

Sounds familiar? All the Banks want you take its Credit Card, as if Banks were not enough, all big retail chains also launched their co-branded credit cards. Even when you go for a credit card, they will still haunt you with their health/life insurance offerings. They only need your phone/mobile number once and that will stay for lifetime in their database and come back periodically and repeatedly with the offers. After all when all media for advertisements have gone dearer, it’s only the telecommunication that’s getting cheaper day by day. Additionally the conversion rates for this medium is higher than any other media thus making it the first choice to get customers.

But this medium is different from others in another important comparison point. You watch a TV commercial when you are watching TV, read an advertisement in newspaper when you are reading other news. Importantly you can choose to ignore the ads at your will. But a telemarketer does not see your convenience. He may ring at odd hours against your will and cause inconvenience and frustration.

To protect telecom customers from these unnecessary calls government started the Nation Do Not Call Registry which will centrally store the phone numbers of all the customers who do not want to be called for commercial promotions and offers. A customer can get his name added in this registry through his telecom company by sending SMS or email as facilitated by the company. Once the company receives the request it will upload the number to the registry. This may take a few days depending on the frequency at which the telecom company uploads the data.

The telemarketers, on the other hand, are required to register themselves with the registry as telemarketers, which gives them facility to get their telephone database filtered removing numbers registered for DND. There are expected to perform this exercise at least every 45 days. If a telemarketer calls a person who have been in DND registry for more than 45 days and the person on other end lodges a complaint, action is taken against the  telemarketer that may range from warning (on first incidence), high tariff (Rs500 per call) or disconnection of number.

Does this work? Yes it does! All you need to do is get started.

Contact the customer care of your telecom company and seek information on how to register for DND. Act on the information and register your number. Wait for a few days for the telecom company to upload your number to central registry. To check if your number is uploaded or not check this status page. If it’s still not uploaded, follow up with telecom company. When it’s uploaded, the status page will show date on which upload took place. Note this date and add 45 days to it after which if you still receive any call, action can be taken against the telemarketer on your complaint.

If you receive any call or sms after 45 days of DND upload, note the phone number, type of commercial message, date and time and lodge a complaint with your telecom customer care. Insist them to give you complaint number. Once a complaint is lodged your telecom company is expected to revert with the actions taken within 28-35 days.

How do you think will these telemarketers stop? With your initiative! Act now and register for DND!! Take action against telemarketers when they call even after 45 days after inclusion in National DNC registry and they will be bound to stop calling you or any other DND protected customer.