I came to know about one wired fact from an online magazine that, “Mosquitoes have killed more humans than all the wars in history”. And my friend Debasish tells many times “u gotta be kidding me! its already 2010 & i still have to suffer mosquito bites”. I don’t know about other countries, whether there mosquitoes are an integral parts of human life or not. But in India, it’s an integral parts of Indian life. You may not believe, but people here are cultivating mosquitoes, by their bad habits though. And if you go to a general shop, you will see many products related to mosquitoes. Mosquito repellent coils, mats, liquid refills, sprays, body cremes etc. There are many brands and for every brand there is a good market too. Did you notice, all these are repelling mosquitoes. Why these companies can’t come with a product which kills mosquitoes. Well, you must be thinking how fool I am. How these companies will kill themselves. Killing mosquitoes means, making a hole in their pocket. So they create such products, which will repel mosquitoes outside. Those mosquitoes will go to their home, will have a wild party (like IPL Nights), have sex with their partners and increase their population. And the next day, they will come to join you. You will again need those mosquito repellent products. So an evergreen marketing plan.

So who will stop them to run this long term suffering plan? Why can’t Govt. of India can’t ban these companies to produce mosquito repellent products. Why can’t Govt. of India spend few money on research to end life cycle of mosquitoes? Oh!!! Now I realize (after one mosquito bite) that the local municipal corporations is not doing anything to save us from these zombies. How can I expect the top level Indian Govt. to take any serious action on this? If we spend a little fraction of money we had spent on buying mosquito repellent products on research to end life cycle of mosquitoes, then we can easily get that done.

I feel that every life in this world has a meaning. They do some good stuff to balance life in the world. But mosquitoes are only useless life in this world. They are not doing any useful stuff.

Few months before, I saw few peoples, who are not in power in local politics, were protesting against mosquito problem in my city Cuttack. But nothing happened significantly. Let me explain why nothing happened. Suppose, Mango eating party is in power and Butter licking party is in opposition. So, now Butter licking party made some hungama with the powerful presence of mosquitoes. And one day come, when Butter licking party will be in power and Mango eating party will be in opposition. If there will be no mosquito then what these people will do?

Several mosquitoes have already bitten me, while I am writing this. And I will not surprise, if I hear someone commits suicide due to terror of mosquitoes. But I have a hope that I will die after mosquitoes become history like dinosaurs.

Image credit: Fickr – tanakawho – Mosquito

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From the first day, when mobile operators started their business, the pulse was 1 minute. Wait! Let me time travel to the old days, when there was no mobile phone, and we have popular (BTW, not that much popular as mobile phones) communication medium – telephone (the fixed line wala). And the pulses are similar to this – local calls (mostly within the city or area, which comes under same STD code, when you don’t need to add STD code while dialing) 3 minutes and STD calls pulses were varying from some seconds (not sure how much second in minimum – I have seen 15 seconds as the minimum) to one minutes.

Then introduced to call any other telephone, which is out side your STD area but in your state, people were using 91 or 95 instead 0 before the STD code while dialing. Those calls were treated as local calls. Then we stepped in PCO era. We saw many PCOs – in every village and 1 in each 7 or 8 shops in towns. One fun part associated with it is as follows. Wherever I have seen any PCO, it is written in big letters – STD ISD PCO. So most people never try to understand what STD, ISD and PCO means. And they call PCO as STD, as STD comes first in that sequence. When I was a kid, and it was the first years of PCO era, I was thinking, “STD means to call any number out of the area, ISD means to call outside India and what’s PCO for? It’s perhaps local calls!”. Then I asked someone and understand PCO stands for Public Call Office, and never call it as STD.

Mobile phone was introduced in PCO era, but was not so popular. The reasons were, mobile handsets were too costly, the operator charges were too costly too. Even you need to pay for receiving calls. Then more operators came in to the business, handsets price started going down and people able to afford a handset and a SIM. Hey! I was talking about pulses. So all the mobile operators were providing 1 minute pulse. Unlike old days of land lines, the 1 minute pulse was fixed for all types of calls – local, on net, and STD. Similarly the land lines plans also revised to have simple pulses, 1 minute for all expect local land line calls which goes for 3 minutes. And instead of charging same for all units, they charge different for different types of calls. So I pay for 60 seconds and always talk less that that! It mostly happens like that. You hang up the call when the timer says some minutes 01 seconds and you need to pay money for those 59 seconds which you have not used. Then I was thinking why no one charges per second pulse.

Then came TATA DOCOMO to Do the new. Flat rate for both local, on net, STD and 1 second pulse. Well it’s time for other competitors to come with some challenging plans. Virgin Mobile showing in their ad, that STD call is less than local calls in their phone, STD call is less that 1 Paisa per second in their phone, but it’s written in small letters, 50 paisa per minute, that means no 1 second pulse, the pulse is 1 minute. Then Aircell people are jumped in to the war with 1 paisa per 1 second pulse (written in small letters, for new connections). And that’s a fucking business theory. You will be very good for your new customers and will treat your loyal old customers as dogs? Why the old customers will not get this service? Do they want their old customers to throw the old SIM and buy a new one to use the new plan? If the operator asks some  money to the existing customers to activate new plans is a bad service too.

Well, I talked much about pulses – 1 minute to 1 second. You can forget the pulses too. CDMA service from TATA Indicom has introduced a plan – pay per call plan, where you can talk for 10 minutes with Rs 1. Here the pulse is 10 minutes, but you need not be worry as it’s cheap!

Making 1 second pulse and having flat rate for STD and Local is a good move. I want to see other the steps forward: 100% free roaming all over India, no change in number when you moved to other state and no change in number if you want to change the operator. You can see number two dream is 100 related with number one and number three is some what related to number two and seems to be more difficult, but not impossible.

Image credit: Fickr – Letheravensoar – Contemporary Clock

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Surf – a very old and popular brand in India. It’s considered to be one of the top brand among all detergents. And I have heard most people using the word ‘Surf’ to refer detergent. They don’t know or they never heard of the word ‘detergent’. Surf is a costly detergent, and there are many other brands which are cheaper – like Wheel, Nirma, Tide (mid budget) etc. Most of the people use these cheap detergents, but they call it ‘Surf’. You will go to a shop and ask “Give me a 500 gram Surf”, the shopkeeper will ask “Which Surf – Surf Excel or Ariel?”. The word ‘Surf’ is on the tongue of many people, but I don’t think Hindustan Unilever – the manufacturer of Surf get more advantage, however sometimes they get lucky and shopkeeper hands you over a Surf packet without asking any question. Here I will say “Daag Achche Hain..”.

Now after detergent let’s talk about soaps. Most of the people use Lux and Lifebuoy soap, I am not saying those are good soaps, but I see most people buying them. Those fall in bathing soap category. In detergent soap category Rin, Sunlight, OK are most selling items. But I have never seen anyone using these brand names for referring a bathing soap or detergent soap.

Now let’s talk about mosquito repellents. Most used mosquito repellents are coils, mats and liquid mosquito repellents. And some popular brands are Good Knight (People never read the name the same, and me too fall under that category, we call it as ‘Good Night’), Mortein, All Out (only liquid repellent). For mats ‘Good Knight’ is the default (most used) name and for liquid ‘All Out’ is the default (most used) name, it does not matter which brand you actually use.

Oops! I did not tell the default name for Coils. Well, this is bit interesting. Let’s switch on the time machine (I don’t believe time travel as shown in films and TV, I mean just recall those old days) and go to around 16 years back. Then mosquito repellents are very less used products in the market. People liked to use mosquito nets or burn dry cow dungs to get rid of mosquitoes. I remember, there were two mosquito coil brands – Tortoise and Rooster and one mosquito mat brand – Goog Knight available in market. And the famous punch line with some funny ads were on TV was “kachua jalao machhar bhagao”. This tag line is so popular that it even flows in some funny SMS. But I don’t see this product in market. In old days, mat machine was so costly that few people use Good Knight mats on light bulbs, lanterns etc. But after All Out introduced liquid mosquito repellent, the market for mats are down, but still available.

Here no one use the word ‘Mosquito Repellent’, all use a brand name of their own choice or practice. Here no brand name rules like ‘Surf’.

Detergents, Soaps, then I should go to Tooth Paste, but I went to Mosquito Repellents, the reason is that, here mosquitoes rule and my eye fell on All Out. Among all tooth pastes, Colgate is the most popular one and a big part of people use the word Colgate to refer any tooth paste. Other big part use the term ‘Paste’ to refer tooth paste and a very few say ‘Tooth Paste’.

Do you know any other brand, which lives on the tongue of people? Do you have any similar experience like this? Please share with us, we will be happy

Image credit: Fickr – mckaysavage – India – Chennai – busy T. Nagar market 2

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