A plush conference room. A scientific meeting underway with probing questions on projects and results.
Grim and Sombre.
Suddenly a piercing sound emanates in a shrill with an amazing urgency.
The lady in a smart business suit sitting next to me screamed, the man with the pince-nez spectacles jumped up, clutching air and Big Boss choked on his coffee, coughing and spluttering.
?What was that ?? He managed to ask.
I sat there, guilty and red faced with the offender, my Reliance phone in my hand, wishing the earth would swallow me. Many accusing pairs of eyes stare at me. Then someone says in a contemptuous tone ?Oh?.Reliance.? as if everything is explained with that one word.
I run out with my phone and look at it fondly.
?I don?t care whatever people may say about you. You are the best. You are MINE.?
Well, I guess that is about it. I am very emotional. And sometimes I am an emotional fool. With Reliance India Mobile, I have been an emotional fool.
July 2003. As the skies parted and the rain made everything look romantic and beautiful, I became a ?saawan ka andha? (Blind in the monsoon). After the great man Ambani paased away, the Ambani Brothers held hands in a gesture of united brotherhood and invited the common Indian man to ?Kar lo Duniya Mutthi mein?. I have been a great fan of Dhirubhai Ambani and was probably one of the first to book my reliance handset in when ?Monsoon Hungama? was announced.
So I got my phone in Rs. 500 and then lived to tell my tale.
SMS
The best news about Reliance. I am able to send and receive sms with great speed. I know that many customers complain about this service but so far, I have never had any problems. The fact that it is only 50 p per message, it is really economical considering that other cellular service providers charge much more. So sometimes I just don?t bother to call up people and prefer smsing (to avoid noise pollution).
Network
Though I like to be blind in my love for my Reliance, let me honest in my review. Irate people who are always trying to track me down (and there are many of those) go ballistic shouting at me to change my phone. I have friends and family members who are literally blood thirsty when it comes to my Reliance India Mobile. According to them, when they try five times, they get me once. Frankly, I turn a deaf ear to their complaints since I don?t like to be easily accessible and hence, it suits me just fine.
Ring tones
The ring tones of Reliance are polyphonic and can sound like loud, jangling church bells on a particularly stormy day. More than once, people next to me have jumped up and clutched something in sheer fright when my Reliance handset decided to express itself. Anyway, the fact is that you can?t download the latest ring tones if you have Reliance. If you want a change, all you can do is download the ring tones from Reliance World. Not that I am complaining since I don?t want to be caught with my phone singing ?Dhoom macha le? or ?Say shava shava?. Reliance ring tones have beautiful music (when played softly) with exotic names like ?Flames?, ?Knell?, ?rain?, ?Razzle?and ?Memento?. There is also ?Rabindra sangeet? for the classically oriented souls.
Billing
My bills always reach me in time and there has never been any errors. OK now let me confess here that sometimes I have been lazy and not paid my bills for as much as two months. Somehow, the balance just gets added to the next bill. I never have to worry about my connection getting terminated due to late payment unlike my friends who use other companies and start having the most spectacular hysterics if they are even a day late in paying their hefty bills.
R world
This is supposed to be the ?internet connection? in my handset but alas ! It never seems to work. Every time I have tried to make this thing go, I get the message ?Error : R world not connected?. The only features that I am able to get are some astrology hoopla, some weird jokes and indifferent looking wallpapers. So this feature is as good as useless, as far as I am concerned.
So the last word on this ?
Reliance India mobile is great. After all, it is MINE.
(In any case, I better like it since I am tied to it for three years).