Ring tones go desi!

How would you like your cell asking you to pick it up and attend to your call in your very own Punjabi... Paaji, phone chak vee lo, or Mere bhai, mere bhai, utha bhi le mere bhai. New entrants into the mobile phone market are offering mindboggling choices, in as mandatory a thing as a ring tone. And the mantra to grab your attention is, going desi!

So, apart from offering Indian, Western and devotional ring tones to choose from, cell phone companies are offering direct access to the net, from where one can download voice tones from any of the Indian languages like Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati, Bihari and so on.

Some interesting voice tones are parodies of famous film dialogues that imitate peculiar styles of dialogue delivery by some of the stars.

If a Dharmendra voices, Phone bajing bajing bajing, ghanti bajing bajing, the infamous cynical Shah Rukh Khan laugh-voices Hihihihi baj raha hai hihi.., then there is Soorma Bhopali saying Ke riya hun utha le, and even Devika Rani from old films saying, Mein na kohti thi ki bajega to a lisping Uncle uncle aapka phone baj laha hai.

Well, cashing on the desi film mania does not stop here. Telephone networks keeps updating themselves on the latest film numbers. So, if there are popular song ring tones from old films like Teesri Manzil and Caravan , even the title music of Malgudi Days , a popular TV serial telecast a few years back, remains in vogue.

But it is the latest tinsel town releases that keep taking the number one position in the ring tones top of the pop chart. Just in case you missed out, the current frontrunners are title tracks of Chalte Chalte , Saathiya and Bollywood Hollywood . Tune in!

However, the ace of them all comes from the land of Bihari babu Laloo Prasad Yadav. It goes...Tohar phonva baj raha hai!