Sms – Petrol Bhai Bhai

In the last three months petrol prices were hiked almost five times, if I am not wrong. Everyone, just everyone went on ranting about it. So much that it became a trending topic on Twitter. The whole world was wondering what exactly Rs. 3 meant! Petrol prices affected us or not, whether we were driving a diesel or a petrol car or traveling all over the nation in flights, all of us were cribbing about it. However little did anyone pay much importance to our dearest service providers treating mobile phones like cars/airplanes and the sim as petrol tank and the balance as if PETROL.

Name it – Airtel, Vodafone, Docomo, Aircel… Each and every one of them who came out with lifetime validity, one paisa per second schemes, unlimited SMS packs, internet packs suddenly and secretly changed schemes.

First of all they changed lifetime validity scheme. No more your sim will be valid for life, so no, you don’t have to laugh along with Ranbir Kapoor when he cracks joke about your late grandma has recharged a new lifetime scheme. Rather your life is now limited to six months. So after every six months you start panicking about life being really short!

Then about the epic “ONE PAISA PER SECOND” scheme. I still remember when Aircel launched free calls from Aircel to Aircel. People sitting side by side were calling each other to know “Time kya hua”. But then Airtel and Vodafone went against Aircel, blocked calls from Aircel and Aircel introduced one paisa per second along with Docomo. Every one of us fell for Docomo’s schemes. So did I. Plus their lovely SMS scheme of pay for first two sms and then 100 free. And now, all this is history.

It is either 1.2 paisa per second for same provider calls or 1.4 paisa per second to others. (If am not wrong) So you can laugh your heart out at our own tomfoolery.

Yesterday I went to recharge my internet pack and the next shocker came when the shop owner told me 1GB for 98 and 2GB for 149. Ok Fine. I understand that our internet packs never get finished. But WTF?!?!? 1GB for 98? I remember pulling my friend’s leg when Docomo did the same and now I became the “Bakra”. Either you shut the 1GB scheme or lower both the price and the data charges. Seriously you guys are already so rich! How much do you want?

AND finally TRAI oh TRAI I love you like I hate you. How do you bar people from messaging? Just few months back I met a lovely American who was going all gaga about how much we use sms and what lovely schemes we have and how lovely is the network here and then you just have to do this? Tell me all of you in TRAI, were you guys having problem managing your kids? Like staying wake whole night and messaging? You put a stupid limit by giving no-valid-reasons!?! You want to stop bulk sms? Fine stop them why stop us from messaging?!

Having said all these, we will all get used to it. Now if by chance MTS or some stupid provider puts on a commercial of free more SMS or balance I am straightaway going to slap the people who made those commercials.

So forget ranting about transport and wonder what you are going to do with your mobile bill now. Communication is now a pain in your ass. Your mobile phone is nothing less than a car. Petrol and your SMS or any balance is same. Yes Indo-China is not the only Bhai-Bhai but SMS and Petrol too. :-x

P.S. The pictures are downloaded from the internet and then edited.