Reality Shows - There is nothing real about it!

Beep beep! went my cell-phone, informing me that my SMS has been delivered to 2525. "Yess, now Rahul Vaidya will surely win Indian Idol" thought me, thanks to my dil-se voting for one of the cutest and talented candidate. I was just another victim of the crazy bug called Reality Shows which had bitten the whole of the world.
2 things happened at the end of the same month, Rahul Vaidya got voted out and my Mobile phone bill showed an SMS charge of Rs. 6 for an SMS sent to a Special Number! Isn't that a shocker! Actually not...

Reality shows based on singing and dancing would of course be a wild-fire in India rather than other parts of the world, with a never ending list of shows permutating among professionals and non-professionals in that particular field. And it compels the bug-smitten viewers to always follow it and try their level best to be a part of it, be involved in deciding the future of all those entertainers on the silver screen. Little do they know that those entertainers have already been paid huge sums to strut their stuff on the stage and little does it matter to them if you spend those 6 rupees with all your good intentions of saving the dude/ dudette from being "Voted out". And the event organiser, producer, broadcaster all earn crores of INRs from advertisers trying to draw our attention to their superstar-endorsed products.

If you are still wondering what difference would those 6 rupees make, you are wrong. About 50% or 3 rupees go to the telecom service provider who facilitates you to send the stupid SMS and the remaining goes to the owner of the four digit number "2525". Yeah, now i understand why none of these numbers are in the format of a normal 10-digit mobile phone number. And with crores of votes every week, each multiplied by 3 gives you the chillar that goes into the kitty of the channel broadcasting the show.

This is an answer to another mystery boggling in my mind. Newspapers, cable TV channels, fortnightly magazines, etc. come up with so many GK quizzes where you get a simple question like "Who played the lead role in the super hit movie Ghajini?". Your options would be (A) Queen Elisabeth II (B) Jadoo from outer space (C) Aamir Khan. And guess what !! You need to send an SMS quickly to another stupid 4 digit number and win bumper prizes of 1000 maruti cars and 5 million gold coins. We feel so amazed at the General Knowledge we possess when we are able to answer this question, and try our luck by spending a paltry 6 rupees. But again, the only prize winners are the ones putting up the "Kya aap paanchvi paas se tez hai" question. Just think of how many people would think like us from the population of 1.5 billion!

There you go, just my thoughts on the crazy SMS voting culture. I hope you enjoyed reading this post. If you like it, please SMS "YES" to #*&^ :-)