Different shades of love

In an age and time where online greetings and Facebook posts are the common ways of expressing love, would you dare to pick up the phone and call your crush from school to tell her how much you liked her? A social media campaign exhorts you to.

14 days, 14 different people, 14 special calls. Poster Boy Art Studios is running a series titled  '#14daysOfLove' where each episode will feature a phone conversation of people talking to a special somebody in their lives. And straying from the usual 'it's a time for couples only' concept, a mother, a sister living in the USA and a school teacher were among the recipients of these phone calls, apart from the 'first loves'.

"I had already run a couple of successful campaigns on the social media in the past like  '#thekatheproject', '#Welikeit' and so on. I wanted to do something for Valentine's Day and this concept about highlighting different relationships struck me. Many people don't express their feelings nowadays because of reasons like ego, misunderstanding and fear of rejection," says Puneeth B A, founder and creative head at Poster Boy Art Studios.  

"Our first caller was a married guy who called up his school crush. He told her about all the things he used to do for her back then - like fighting with other boys for her and waiting in front of her house and all. She didn't even know this part of the story and kept on laughing," he adds.

The people, who were selected by Puneeth, were captured on camera while making the calls and the videos are being uploaded on the official page every day till February 14. Others can also take part in it by uploading videos of themselves, making that one special call, with the hashtag '#14daysOfLove'. The best ones will get gift vouchers from Aralikatte Lifestyle Store and Project Gypsy. People who are not comfortable making videos can express their love in four-line stories, poems, short stories, posts, short videos, creative posters etc.

The campaign, which is running on their digital media platform Ideeria, will have a grand finale of sorts on Valentine's Day. "In the Kannada film industry, when you talk of special phone calls, just one name comes to mind - 'Beladingala Baale'. The entire film sees Anant Nag talking to an unknown lady and getting drawn to her without knowing her identity. This part was played by actor Suman Nagarkar. And in the last episode, she will be seen making a phone call to the filmmaker Sunil Kumar Desai," says Puneeth.  

Puneeth is leading the team that is bringing this project. The project has the Poster Boy Art Studios team - Rahul Mahabaleshwar, Samartha S Nadig, Chandra H M, Pratham Sheshadri and Subhash Hebbar - working on the technical and execution end of the project. With Puneeth, Sandhya Prakash (Aralikatte Lifestyle Store) and Sandeep Hatti (Project Gypsy) have backed the production.

Shreyas K was one of the bold ones who decided to bare his feelings towards his office colleague as part of this project. "My present office, by the way," he says laughingly. "We have been best friends in office for a long time and I was worried whether I should jeopardise this friendship by voicing out my feelings. I could never do that in office anyway because we never got the time. So when Puneeth approached me for this, I decided to go ahead."

And how did the lady react? "She had a hint of it already but was waiting for me to say it out loud. And when I did, she kept on laughing. Later when I met her in office, she said it was a lot of fun. She even watched the video these guys put up and told me I was blushing too much in it," says Shreyas with a laugh.

Puneeth adds, "Some people asked me if I was putting people in some sort of risk because of this. I told them jokingly- We are the first generation to put up so many status messages and posts about taking risks. We should do it in real life too."