'Zoozoo' in the age of romance

Finally we’ll see the new government holding the cabinet on Tuesday morning after much fanfare spread across elections and politics. UPA came out as a clear winner despite various odds against its favour. ‘Elections’ was not the only topic of this month, for least interested citizens there was Indian Premier League (IPL), a series of cricket matches that took more than 45 evenings of your schedule (matches are still going on..). People are still shuffling between sports channel and news channel to get latest of the news from both spheres.

In the midst of these two occasions I came to see one interesting ad: -Vodafone’s new character called “Zoozoo”…!!! I wasn’t interested in its first ad in which a group of ‘Zoozoo’s were lined up for getting Xeroxed…!!! As the concept matured, the ad seems to be quite amusing and these characters were getting comical. Each and every ad represents a functionality being offered by Vodafone and it is described in a very simple and efficient manner. The customers could relate to these situations quite comfortably and can laugh at the characters as they behave.

‘Zoozoo’ is a character that is played by actors wearing a white, body hugging suit and having an enormous looking shaped head. These heads were painted with every possible expression that needs to be displayed. Every shot of the ad consists of a situation and ‘zoozoo’s acting in that and finally how the particular functionality of Vodafone can help you in these situations. The expressions are quite good and hilarious. On the contrary Airtel has also launched its ad featuring Madhavan and Vidya Balan representing a romantic couple and showing the add-on functionalities of Airtel. But since the IPL has started (around a month or so) Airtel has changed its theme hardly twice. On the other hand I have seen almost 10-15 different themes of ‘Zoozoo’ since they appeared first time on television. The popularity that Vodafone has gained over the month shows that viewers would still prefer humour over romance.

Despite of being age-old Airtel customer, Vodafone holds the edge for me this time on television..!!!!

"Hum 7 saath hain..."

Last week was filled with lot more activities than normally what we are occupied with. Our newly rented house had played the host for seven people including me and my wife. Mummy, papa, my sister and two of my cousins had visited Hyderabad for a week passed by and it was the first time after our marriage that we were hosting a big gathering. It was an amazing feeling all together.

I remember last time my parents had came to Hyderabad and all were bundled into a single small room. I had no cooking gas in house and can’t afford a house made meal for them. I bought a defective hot plate that brought me shame while cooking a Maggi. I know that parents are most flexible to stay with their children, but I could sense the displeasure while they left for Jaipur.

As the last week passed by, I could feel the sense of contentment that I could present my parents with better living style than before. Credit goes to my wife who was able to manage guests mostly without my help. We had already started the preparation for this occasion a month before. Everyday we used to load my bike with odd-shaped stuffs…we paid minute attention to every detail that could be sensed by any guest. We had experienced many things during this vacation…we tried sizzlers at the most famous restaurant “Indijoes”…tried biryani at “Paradise” , the most famous hotel for biryanis in Hyderabad…had done some pearl shopping (not on my account this time..!!)…went to “Eat Street” at Hussain Sagar Lake where we were sweating like anything …and most importantly chatted like never before.

Finally all of them left our place on Sunday leaving a vacuum in our ‘home’. All our efforts were finally converted to smiling faces…. atleast this 'kodak moment' says so..