On White, Bald Men and Flippin' Da Bird!

The following article is by Tishani Doshi (courtesy Cricinfo) and is very relevant to my comments below it:-

Racket sport

Why the IPL is noise pollution by another name

May 1, 2009

	So what did he say when he learned he hadn't made a hundred after all? © AFP

Last night I dreamed I was watching a movie in a theatre with those weird, bald people from the Vodafone commercials. They were sitting in the row behind me, and then one of them started shrieking into his cellphone in that high-pitched Tamil-Japanese nonsense language of his people, and I turned around and beat him over the head. Okay, I'm lying. I didn't really dream about those people, but I did go to a movie theatre, and a guy did start talking into his phone, in Tamil, and I did hit him on the arm and warn him if he didn't *£#^ing switch his phone off, I would do it for him.

What can I say? I have a low threshold for noise. And upping my daily quota of cricket hasn't made things better. First of all, I no longer have any idea about what's going on in the world, other than a very peripheral knowledge of the swine-flu pandemic, madness in Sri Lanka, and courtesy this morning's Hindu, a delightful picture of the entire Bachchan family with their middle fingers up in the air (to show they've voted, but still very funny). Secondly, the Extraaa Innings theme music hasn't helped my phonophobia any. Can someone please explain to me why commercials have to be so much louder than the actual television programmes? Do we really need to be hectored authoritatively, without any trace of nuance or humour, over and over again?

At this point in my rant, I think I had better differentiate between sound and noise. Sound is what we hear, noise is unwanted sound. So the difference between sound and noise depends very much upon the listener and the circumstances. It's like those HSBC commercials with the picture of the sitar player: one sign says "pleasure", the other "torture". It's all about perspective. But surely there are some absolutes? There have to be. Those cars reversing to the national anthem? Sivamani and his bleeding drums? Surely no one can find that pleasing?

Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm just extraaa-sensitive. But what's really frustrating is that the things I'd like to hear are muted, and the other things are blasted. Who wants to hear Raveena Tandon going on about her husband (who looks like Daniel Vettori, according to her)? I'd much rather know what they're talking about in the dugout, or what the wicketkeeper is saying to the batter at the crease. What was Adam Gilchrist saying to the umpire after the Deccan Chargers lost to the Delhi Daredevils yesterday? What did Suresh Raina say when he got back to the bench and found out he'd actually only made 98?

And then there's beauty in wordlessness. The actions that require no subtitles or voiceovers. Robert Quiney giving Swapnil Asnodkar a tender knock on the helmet after the latter hit Albie Morkel for a six. And then, the very next ball, Asnodkar going for a double out: hitting his own stumps and being caught by Badrinath. What do you possibly say about that?

I'll leave you to chew on that for a moment, while I excuse myself. Because you see, my team kicked ass yesterday. I'm off to go shout it out from the rooftops!

Tishani Doshi is a writer and dancer based in Chennai

Read it?? That by the way is just part of the many humourous articles on IPL page 2 on Cricinfo including the various Rules from Hell which my gtalk id boasts of as status messages. Ok enough advertising! The reason I did a ctrl+C, ctrl+V on that post is because he speaks on 2 topics which have caught mine, and surely many others', attention in the last week- namely the Vodafone series of ad's and the...well... this:- 

 

In fact an article has been written just on this in the Times of India blog (Surprise, surprise!) which is seriously worth reading here. I saw a similar version of the pretty Bachchan family (They got spies everywhere! EVERYWHERE!!) showing the entire nation that they have voted in grand style. If only Mrs Jaya Bachchan had complied, that would have been a proper fcuked-up picture  in more ways than one! Whats with the middle finger getting the voter ink anyway? The common man gets it on his right index finger and even though he/she knows its indelible, tries to wipe it after voting. But when realised that its gonna stick with you: Viola, it becomes a thing to flaunt (I've voted, Have you? *smug look*). At times where the bollywood stars are no longer big for reverence, such images serve to lighten the election mood. Oh did I mention India is having its Lok Sabha elections? Dakshina Kannada recorded a record (WTF??) 74.2% voter turn-out and I suppose a lot of hype generated with the Mangalore Pub incident did help there.

But wait: I see a few bald men. They are white. They speak tamil/japanese/djiboutian all together. They are coming towards me. And suddenly.....

I dare you to say you haven't seen any of these ad's if you are in India! They are everywhere: TV, Radio, Bill boardings, Traffic Signals.. Vodafone has something huge on its hands here and the best part for them is that they keep adding new versions for their various services. I would much rather see this on tv once rather than get the same irritating messages on my IDEA phone (What an Idea, Sir-ji) but the grapes are very sour on this line (Pun intended, hope you got it).. In fact, to tell you how big this is The Hindu has had an article on this here which says those little white people are indeed Men called "ZooZoos" and that Facebook has a fan club for them with more than 30,000 fans already! Who am I to argue with them? And hey if you are so big a fan of these ads then you are free to download them at this link, courtesy Vodafone of course. Or you can wait a while for the Official ZooZoo merchandise to come out (Not a joke, they are making it as we speak!). So while you peeps take a look at those links (I swear they are ALL worth reading), I am gonna go download TV series' episodes.. Farewell DC++, we shall miss you greatly! Sob sob..