It was a pretty calm and unexciting day when the phone rang, as it always did, quite suddenly.
Voice: Hello. I'm calling from IMRB on behalf of Airtel broadband to check customer satisfaction. Could you spare five minutes of your time to answer some questions?
Me: Yes!
(Background: My broadband had been behaving like MTNL's dialup for three months. I would call regularly to complain, and they would respond that an engineer had come by and everything was wonderful. It was like Middle Eastern propaganda. I nearly forgot what a 4mbps connection looked like. Just the other day a guy at the call center blew up at me for being unprofessional when I called the connection "shit". His awesome response: "The shit connection, sir, is because we have server trouble." Server trouble is like the Indian online version of dog ate my homework. Big-ass faceless entity that's safe to shake a fist at. Like a picture of god.)
Voice: Is any member of your family in the media?
Me: Yes.
Voice: Who?
Me: Me.
(Silence.)
Voice: Thank you for your time. We're not looking for feedback from the media today.
And then she hung up to go find some non-media person. Today it's us media folk. Next come the bloggers. Then the ones on Twitter.
You know where this is headed.
Voice: Sorry sir, Airtel broadband's not looking for customer feedback from anyone using the internet.
