The Mumbai domestic airport waiting lounge has free wi-fi. No, I'm serious. It's labelled "Free Internet From Airtel" and it's super brilliant fast. Which is really convenient because you know, you're sitting there addicted to the internet and having nothing to do. It's frankly quite warming that Bharti is so thoughtful. Makes you wonder a little bit.

Picture a guy come in open up his laptop, scan for networks and then see "Free Internet From Airtel" open his browser, fire up Gmail and see a page that tells him he needs a username and password to use the internet, and that he can have one sent to his Airtel phone by just typing his Airtel number into a text box and hitting Send.

Which is so damned convenient, really it took exactly 20 seconds for the SMS to come through, and the username and password actually worked. Now that's convenient.

Unless of course you're not an Airtel consumer.

In which case you'll probably get so angry you won't want to use Airtel or see one of their super awesome emo advertisements.

Bharti is a 27 billion USD company and they can't give free internet to a waiting lounge 100 people strong. The whole point of advertising free stuff and giving yourself a better image is to invite people into you're circle of trust. Instead, what they've gone and done is alienate the 4 out of 5 people who're already outside they're circle of trust and literally give the ones' inside an egalitarian feeling, which is quite alright of course if you weren't already doing that with your hairbrained billing schemes that trap us in for life.

But yeah, it's alright to assume every 100 people out of a 100 waiting for an airplane to Chennai in Bombay at 21:30pm on a Sunday night must be Airtel
users. It would be blasphemous to assume otherwise.

"Sanitarium,
Just leave me alone."
Metallica - Sanitarium