Mumbai: Choosing a caller tune for your phone may seem an innocuous thing to do. But it reveals a lot about your personality to the caller, say sociologists.
In an age where there’s a variety of caller tunes and ring tones to choose from, cell phone users may be, knowingly or unwittingly , imprinting their individuality on their handsets. Call John Abraham and you will hear a bike on the go. It isn’t surprising, given the Dhoom actor’s love of mean machines. Before you can speak to Ajay Jasra, public relations officer for Spice Jet Airlines, a lyrical Jagjit Singh warns you, baat niklegi toh door talak jaayegi. Jasra justifies his preference, saying, “I regularly have to deal with journalists and sometimes what I casually mention in passing is in the papers the next day.” Moreover, he says, “A ghazal gives an impression that I am a cultured person, not the bhangra kind.”
Caller tunes are as much a psychological marker of people’s personality as their choice of clothes or shoes is. When Ramesh Doshi, a Marwari jeweller from Colaba, set his tune to, Whole thing is that ke bhaiyya, sabse bada rupaiyya, his callers appreciated his “apt choice.” After all, “What is the biggest thing in today’s world?” asks Doshi. “It’s rokda.”
IITian Piyul Mukherjee, who is doing a doctorate on changing India and is researching for a leading handset company, says, “From the caller tune, one can not only guess the person’s age and taste, but also his present mental state.” She gives an instance of her own driver who as a new father changed his caller tune to a baby’s loud wails.
It’s, however, a little unusual to find a city psychiatrist choosing Amitabh Bachchan’s lines from Sarkar, maine bahut saare gairkanuni kaam kiye hain... But Dr Harish Shetty blames the disillusionment with the system to justify his tune, which he chose in the backdrop of his public interest litigation against segregation of school children on the basis of their academic scores. He won the case, yet segregation hasn’t stopped. “For me, the anti-hero character is very appealing as the rampant educational untouchability practised in school angers me.”
Interestingly, if the caller tune doesn’t reflect the owner’s personality, he draws flak from callers. When assistant municipal commissioner Prakash Thorat selected the romantic Yeh Lamhe for his phone, “at least 10 people told me, it didn’t go well with my job profile.” Thorat settled for the good samaritan line: “Kisiki muskurahaton pe ho nisaar, kisika dard mil sake toh le udhaar.”
In an age where there’s a variety of caller tunes and ring tones to choose from, cell phone users may be, knowingly or unwittingly , imprinting their individuality on their handsets. Call John Abraham and you will hear a bike on the go. It isn’t surprising, given the Dhoom actor’s love of mean machines. Before you can speak to Ajay Jasra, public relations officer for Spice Jet Airlines, a lyrical Jagjit Singh warns you, baat niklegi toh door talak jaayegi. Jasra justifies his preference, saying, “I regularly have to deal with journalists and sometimes what I casually mention in passing is in the papers the next day.” Moreover, he says, “A ghazal gives an impression that I am a cultured person, not the bhangra kind.”
Caller tunes are as much a psychological marker of people’s personality as their choice of clothes or shoes is. When Ramesh Doshi, a Marwari jeweller from Colaba, set his tune to, Whole thing is that ke bhaiyya, sabse bada rupaiyya, his callers appreciated his “apt choice.” After all, “What is the biggest thing in today’s world?” asks Doshi. “It’s rokda.”
IITian Piyul Mukherjee, who is doing a doctorate on changing India and is researching for a leading handset company, says, “From the caller tune, one can not only guess the person’s age and taste, but also his present mental state.” She gives an instance of her own driver who as a new father changed his caller tune to a baby’s loud wails.
It’s, however, a little unusual to find a city psychiatrist choosing Amitabh Bachchan’s lines from Sarkar, maine bahut saare gairkanuni kaam kiye hain... But Dr Harish Shetty blames the disillusionment with the system to justify his tune, which he chose in the backdrop of his public interest litigation against segregation of school children on the basis of their academic scores. He won the case, yet segregation hasn’t stopped. “For me, the anti-hero character is very appealing as the rampant educational untouchability practised in school angers me.”
Interestingly, if the caller tune doesn’t reflect the owner’s personality, he draws flak from callers. When assistant municipal commissioner Prakash Thorat selected the romantic Yeh Lamhe for his phone, “at least 10 people told me, it didn’t go well with my job profile.” Thorat settled for the good samaritan line: “Kisiki muskurahaton pe ho nisaar, kisika dard mil sake toh le udhaar.”