Blink issue 81 august15 2015

saturday, august 15, 2015

This month marks the 20th anniversary of the mobile phone in India; a small device that has changed our lives beyond recognition. It has given rise to new ways of work, activism and journalism. It has cemented our relationships and damaged them as well. The cellphone is the deďŹ nitive symbol of freedom and revolution in modern India.

partha pratim sharma

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BEYOND THE FIELD

Losing their marbles The Australian performance at the Ashes, while being a nadir, isn’t an outlier. Batting line-ups around the world are succumbing to unexceptional bowling attacks as batsmen struggle with different formats suhrith parthasarathy

Oopsie daisy Australia were simply undone by England, their shambolic batting performance characterised by utter non-application of mind or technique Anywhere and everywhere The cellphone has catapulted numerous Indians into the worldwide web, bypassing the world of computers reuters m srinath

W Dial M for change ithin the first session of play on the first day of the fourth Ashes Test Match at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, Australia were bundled out for an astounding total of 60 runs. Having elected to field first, England’s bowling was consistently excellent, and they were aided by conditions that had just enough nip. The hometown boy Stuart Broad scalped eight Aussie victims, and he was particularly impressive in using the crease to vary his angles to outstanding effect. But this was by no means a performance ofmade any thrilln July 31, 1995, a call was from ing repute from England.

ForIt the mosteverypart, Calcutta to Delhi. changed Australia were simply as they had thing.

Or, undone, nearly everything — been in the third test at bytime, a shamfrom how weEdgbaston, work, spend robolic batting performance was charactermance, betray, to how we that fall asleep.

The call ised by utter non-application ofCommunimind or travelled from the then Minister of technique. cations Sukh Ram to West Bengal chief minismatch cricket, most other sport, ofterTest Jyoti Basu.

Littlelike did those two hoary ten producesknow one-sided contests. part of gentlemen that the deviceBut they held its premium, in theoryofatIndians any rate,—is(over the excelwould give millions 900 lence in sporting standards that it is meant to million, at last count) — what they had not beyield.

Contrary toHere popular prefore, autonomy. was aperception, gadget thatthe was as sent Australian batting line-up is— notnot devoid of deeply personal as footwear to be talent. was none of itscould batshared,Yet notit to betelling asked that for and which smen thedistances. wherewithal counter cover possessed improbable Thetocellphone the opposition under what typical freed individuals from the were tyranny of Enthe glish conditions.

As isand onlyits to be expected,workAushousehold landline whimsical tralia failedwere to the recover from their batting ings. Gone days of waiting in line at a performance on spectrum the first morning, andmemhave PCO, or sharing with family now conceded Ashes to antoo English bers,abjectly or getting news the three weeks late. side is, at its best,was promising and, its And,that suddenly, there little need toatplan worst, beatable. ahead.eminently The cellphone became a personal beaOne the most statisticsinstanfrom con forofthe here andsignificant now. By bringing the firstitsession’s play was that only eight ofIt taneity, opened up a world of possibilities. the deliveries that took to ways, bowl out Aushas 111 changed lives in it multiple whether tralia wereit actually going on toor hit the by making easy to keep in touch do busistumps.

This,we in spend itself, is damning indictness or how oura leisure time.

The ment of thealso Australian batsmen’s flawed techcellphone catapulted millions of Indians nique.

Inworldwide English conditions, as is almost trite into the web, bypassing the world to it’s imperative that batsmen, espeof observe, computers. cially theofnew ball, Singh. leave deliveries Takeagainst the case Poonam She hails both line and length.

But, until numfromon Darjeeling, her mother a tea their picker and ber eight batsman Mitchell in father, a supervisor in the teaJohnson estates. came She first to bat,to none of12 the Australians showed even as came Delhi years ago, looking for employ-

much as an inclination towards allowing the demands of limited overs cricket. Once a crickball to float through to the wicketkeeper. It’s eter makes a fundamental switch in his attione thing to make mistakes based on misjud- tude towards the art of batsmanship — gement. But it’s an altogether different thing towards a culture that demands that every to make no effort towards judging deliveries ball be met with a heavy bat — it’s difficult to and choosing which ones to play. The latter attune oneself to the rigours of Test matches. transgression is simply inexcusable at Test No doubt, there are some batsmen, such as match level.

England’s Alastair Cook and India’s CheteshWorryingly though, this Australian per- war Pujara, who have retained an aptitude for formance, while representing a nadir, isn’t an batting within largely traditional confines. outlier. Increasingly, batting line-ups around Their respective failures in limited overs the world, including England’s, have dis- games, though, make their methods unapplayed inherent fragility, ment. With the help of her and sister-in-law, she balne ka hunar pealing in an(Thank era where of to aa gaya you,much Life, for have nine soon often foundgone workdown as the like stay-in help of a family all the knocksa you’ve cricketer’s dealtfinancial me. Youwellbeing may have pins unexceptional bowling in thetoposh South Delhi neighbourhood of Va- not taught me depends performances in how toonwalk, but you have attacks.

“You just don’t the call her sant Vihar.

Back then, shesee would famT-20 Yet, as Murali Vijay art leagues. of survival.)

One of thetaught most me the old-fashioned of thefromsignificant ily once in twoblunting or three weeks, a PCO in statistics — who hasused enjoyed the richesand of Poonam has never a computer new ball, ormarket. playersInscrapping the nearby 2006, she bought her the Indian Premier League — has considers cybercafés to be places of disrepute. was that only eight of through a tough wrote first cellphone, andspell,” is today the proud shown,toit’s still very much But when her phone, she is possia pro. the owner 111 deliveries that it comes the Australian skipper of a former Micromax Unite. She continues toitwork ble for a player to bat in Test She tells me to switch on the Bluetooth so that took to have Ricky Ponting in a column last a reputation with the same family, has earned matches in a She manner thather is conshe can photos. arches eyeAustralia bowled outtransfer week.

“It seems though when for her perfectasmutton cutlets and lightventionally chiselled. brow as I fumble through my settings.

Of were actually going you loserotis, one wicket lose four weight but heryou modes and Vijay, who not too long ago course she has a Facebook acon to hit the stumps or five in a of rush, and the game channels communication was known mostly for excount, with hundreds of his friends goes them.” Ponting, have with changed beyond ploits in the hasViber rapidly eson it. She evenIPL, uses to stay among others, have pointed torecognition. tablished himself as inIndia’s in touch with close pals Singawards the advent, establishWe meet in the and spic-and-span most But dependable Test batsman. pore. most importantly, with The cellphone ment, of Twenty-20 as a primary cause a personal two-room quarter cricket she shares He has achieved through and her this cellphone shehard getswork to speak became for this decline batting with her sisterin Satya.

Thetechniques. walls reliance methods recto her son twice or thrice—aofweek. beacon for the hereon ‘unfashionable’ unquestionably element of truth areThere’s decorated with photosan of her ognising where his off-stump is, and A generous boy in classshowcasXI has a and now to this theory.son, Although there are some nota- ing oodles ofcellphone nine-year-old Prashant, now patience and he mental strength. allows mother ble exceptions, even those whoin spent their for- Yet, in his caseand studying at a boarding school too,son there a catch.With Prashto is connect. mative yearsAlways honingquiet, their today skills in long-form Darjeeling.

Vijay, for allant’s his T-20 adventures, firstonmade marks weighing her cricket, thehas task of batting his name as mind, Poonamincreasingly is quieter stillfind as she an opener for Tamil Nadu who the forthcoming conversafor periods, of giving the new ball its could justextended got a WhatsApp message from her son’s batbefor hours onfor end.

And his more retion will a hard one a concerned mother due, an onerous task. news.

As the He former England school.

It isn’t good has failed in cent rejuvenation as ason long-form cricketer has in Delhi and a young in Darjeeling. captain GrahamShe Gooch noted in 2013, the also come at the expense of a declining form most subjects. worries about the“It’s future, whole package of notremove only having the techniwhether she should him from school, in limited Just a ringovers away cricket. So, perhaps, it is diffical skills having the attitude, the mental send himbut to his grandparents’ house or wait cult forare most batsmen have tointernal make conThere roughly 400tomillion mitoughness, the discipline, the concentration. stant for him to settle down. betweentovarious grantstransitions in India, according the 2011formats, census.

Anyone can concentrate for 15-20 minutes, but Her WhatsApp status messages often tell of and as longofasthem, T-20 continues to risefamily in imporFor many removed from and to hundreds have her to concenherscore stateTest of mind.

She you changes display tance, of Test matchabatting, more homes,the thequality cellphone becomes lifeline to distrate a long period of time.”of herself juxta- than photofor often — from portraits anythingand else,wives. is likely suffer. tant children Notonews is too small To a with largeflowers extent,to the decline in the techniposed inspirational quotes.

To- or too petty to be messaged across. After all is a Chennai-based lawyer cal andmessage mental aptitude of thokare batsmendene is a conseday’s reads: Itni ke liye suhrith what areparthasarathy filial relationships built on but the writer t@suhrith quence having to /adapt one’s game the and shukriya,ofEh-Zindagi Chalne ka na sahi,tosamexchange of the mundane and the everyday?

Across India, mobile phones have given millions of people what they didn’t have before — access to their loved ones and the world beyond, and autonomy

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Rajdev Pandey, a migrant from Bihar who has now lived in Kolkata for 40 years, is keeping track of his children with the cellphone, just like Poonam. He speaks to his seven children nearly every day, querying them about their studies and work. Life was very different when he first moved to the city. He spent his days rolling rasgullas and frying samosas without calling home for months. He made annual visits to his village when the rains lashed down.

This is when he checked on his crops, married, and fathered his progeny. The news of the birth of a child would reach him by post, often three weeks after the event. When the first cellphone arrived in his village, it was initially considered common property and used to convey news of emergencies. Today, in Pandey’s village house alone there are eight cellphones; one each for the children and his wife.

Within a decade all eight have hewn an individual connection with their loved ones and the world.

If the cellphone has helped connect families, it also separates this generation from the previous. While the elders in the family might concede the utility of the phone for staying in touch, for many younger people the phone is a defining device for work. Kannan is a dapper 24-year-old belonging to the Bettakurumba tribe in the lush hills of Gudalur in the Nilgiris. His Adivasi parents are labourers. Back in Class X, working as a daily wager after school, Kannan had saved enough money to buy his first phone — a Nokia 1100, but of course. Even as a high school student he foresaw the value of the gadget. After leaving school, he worked in Kochi for a few years and is today back in Gudalur with The Shola Trust. He has spent the last few months mapping the growth and spread of lantana in Mudumalai, Bandipur and Wayanad. While he used his first phone for SMS and calls, to stay in touch with friends, today his phone is his office. He uses it for accounting, research and coordination, and is adept at Google calendar, Google docs and other applications. His parents have stayed clear of owning a cellphone, but when they wish to speak to a relative, they use Kannan’s or his elder sister’s.

But keeping track of loved ones can also prove a hazardous affair. Susheela, who arrived in Chennai three years ago from Chidambaram (where she helped her family

Connection made (Top) Poonam with her son Prashant at Delhi’s Lotus Temple just before he left for boarding school in Darjeeling; Susheela moved to Chennai from Chidambaram three years ago

cultivate rice and til), learnt this the hard way. deem their absence as something amiss.

Of large build and sashaying hips, she works Home to roughly 130 men, the urban shelter as a domestic help in five homes in Chennai. opposite the National Club of Fatehpuri in Old Her taxi-driver husband has signed up as an Delhi tells an altogether different — and a rathOla driver and recently bought a Toyota Etios. er silent — cellphone story. Men with no perBut Susheela isn’t too pleased. She feels that manent address in the Capital pay ₹10 to his ‘work trips’ to Mahabalipuspend 24 hours in this clean but ram are a façade for a spartan barrack. It is Sunday afrendezvous with his lover. Using ternoon, and most of them are her teenage son’s help, she reswathed in heavy sleep. We noWe are so corded her husband on the tice cellphones in a few hands, accustomed to phone. She plays her husband’s and the owners say they have had hearing phones ring entreaties to the Saidapet lover them only for three or four days. that we deem their on loop: “When shall we meet?

We are puzzled at that. Brajesh, absence as You know I like the way your hair who works with Society for the something amiss smells. Next time do adorn your Promotion of Youth and Masses hair with malli pu (jasmine flowand visits the shelter every day, ers).” She refuses to delete the resays the men don’t hold on to cording, saving it as a reminder their phones for long as they sell of her husband’s errant ways them for their next fix — whether and a spur for her own wrath. While the cell- it’s drugs, alcohol or eraser fluid. Paras, a 19phone might have allowed her to trap her hus- year-old who works as a bus cleaner/ loader/ laband (he promises to redeem his ways), she bourer bought his ‘Chinese’ phone for ₹300 a turns to “higher authorities” for possible solu- few days ago. He hasn’t saved any numbers on tions. On the bidding of a sadhu, she observes it, because he has no family to stay in touch a maun vrat (vow of silence and fasting) once a with. He doesn’t know where they are, and week to try and keep her husband on the they don’t know he is at a ‘rain basera’. Perstraight and narrow track. When her phone haps he will sell his phone in a few days. But rings on Fridays, she pays no heed to it. for now, Angry Birds is keeping him busy and away from the realities of the street. For 24 Brief respite hours, that is autonomy.

We are so accustomed to hearing phones ring and seeing faces cast in a blue glow that we nandini nair

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Digital native Kannan of the Bettakurumba tribe bought his first cellphone in high school

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Bites of heritage A new cookbook takes you into the kitchens of seven communities in Tamil Nadu

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Annapurni: Heritage Cuisine from Tamil Nadu Sabita Radhakrishna Roli ₹995

ot so long ago, the average Indian’s knowledge of South Indian cuisine was limited to idlis and dosas, with the entire south of India in a blur of coconuts and pepper and rice. Likewise, not much was known about North Indian cuisine — as indistinguishable to the average South Indian — except for tandoori chicken and chhole bhature. Today’s gourmet takes pride in being able to identify the variations of Chettiar and Tamil Brahmin cuisine and may even be ready to explore the cuisines of the lesser-known communities in each state.

Sabita Radhakrishna’s new cookbook, Annapurni, explores the cuisines of a few of Tamil Nadu’s communities, from her own Mudaliar community to the previously undocumented recipes of Tamil Muslims and Naidus and Kongunadus. The book’s attractive design makes it look like an old scrapbook, peppered with illustrations and vintage photographs of the AGENDA various communities featured in it. The author has focused on seven communities: Vellalar Christians and Mudaliars, Anglo-Indians, Tamil Muslims, Nattukottai Chettiars and the Naidus and Kongunadus. Tamil Nadu has a staggering number of classes and communities, among them the Naidus and Kongunadus who have migrated from the neighbouring state of Andhra Pradesh. After an introduction to the culture and culinary traditions of Tamil Nadu, Radhakrishna prebeen a TV journalist for a decade. sents have each community with a summary of its Buttraditions a fortnight ago, I produced my first history, and festivals.

The preparainterview (with Member Parliament tion and consumption of foodofand the celeJay of Panda) thatiswas filmed streamed bration a meal a form of and expression in live by a mobile phone. In television terms, the smartphone doubled up as the camera and the OB van. In effect, the cost of producing a live interview such as this had been reduced to about 0.0001 per cent — or some such ridiculous fraction — of a conventional production.

So had the size of the equipment we needed to carry, not to mention the absence of government licences or prohibitive transmission fees which TV channels must pay.

What’s more, viewers could not only watch the interview live on their mobile phones, they could also ask questions and interact with the guest. While there has been much noise — globally and in India — about how the digital shift is killing print publications, few realise that digital video may be the TV-killer.

Reed Hastings, CEO of the wildly popular movie-streaming site Netflix, believes that broadcast TV in the US will die by 2030, with online and mobile videos taking over. Hastings told The Hollywood Reporter, “It’s kind of like the horse, you know, the horse was good until we had the car.” This tectonic shift has already begun in India too: two of my friends from journalism school, both with a decade of TV experience, have quit to join start-up mobile apps.

The current global market leaders in this disruptive mobile video streaming technology are Periscope and Meerkat, both available on Android and iOS. In March this year Twitter bought Periscope for close to $100 million, according to The Wall Street Journal. That is a pretty mind-boggling price for a platform that was still at a beta stage then. But if you look at the incredible growth in this space, the price appears justified.

YouTube killed the TV star Mobile video data consumption is growing at a whopping 88 per cent annually and traffic is expected to grow 24 times in the next five years pv sivakumar

Revolution in your hands Flavours capital Naidu fish fry, one of the recipes from Annapurni avabhaykumar

How mobile video streaming will become the TV-killer

sambuddha mitra mustafi

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every culture and this is evident in this ac- dient that sets it apart from the others. Even count of the food traditions of each communi- the ubiquitous rasam and sambar have variaty. According If the Chettiars areglobal well mobile known data for their to Cisco, traf- tions eachstages community: themedia Anglos have in the in initial — as digital compalegendary and the fun-loving An-a turned fic grew 69hospitality per cent in 2014, with almost half rasam or mulligatawny into a nies arethe stillspicy not well funded enough to do rigglo-Indians for theiradded joie de vivre, she says rich billion new devices in the year, taking soup with areportage. chicken broth, makorous, original But ifthereby you look at these traits are evident in their culinary tradi- ing the total number of devices and connections their the itUS, forown. example, Huffington Post picked tions to 7.4 too. billion. And of the mobile data traffic, 55 upThe areprize conspicuous by their abits Brahmins first Pulitzer in 2012 for national what food of sence perSocent wasdistinguishes mobile videothe traffic.

To of puteach this in fromwhile this extensively reporting, digital-first researched outlets likecookVice, these communities?

Shemobile tells us:video The Nattuperspective, last year’s traffic book of Tamil Nadu cuisine, Politico and Vox areheritage producing somethough of the kottai Chettiars, whothe celebrate theentire use ofglobspic- the was nearly 20 times size of the author does say that it was not possible to most innovative storytelling formats. es with exuberance, al internet in 2000. have a wide range of meat include many communities.

On the consumption side,The theChettiar mobile sechas dishes cooked in rich gravies andis even faster, given the viewer In India, mobile video growth tion, disappointingly, hasboth onlyin a incredible choice, ‘tiffin’ specials like smartphones paniyaram andand ever im- terms of variety spurred by cheap few of recipes from their content and thevast timeand at adai.

Thedata Naidus are noticeably proving connectivity.

Mobile video data which they want varied to cuisine. consume it. Features like health-conscious and particular consumption is growing at a whopping 88 per custom notifications Radhakrishna’s cookbook is and on-demand videos about using oldand grains likeismillets cent annually traffic expected Tamil to grow full of folklore and is legends, marmean that the news consumer engaged in Muslims have and jowarin inthe their diet.five Theyears.

Kongu24 times next And there is aof distinctive ritualsthat andshe theisfiner points real-time withriage the issues passionate a range nadu community has interesting generation growing up out of cooking, also the about.

She noaslonger has correct to wait biryanis like variations in favourite its cuisine‘TV and uses there whose chanmethod of serving in a traditional the newspaper the mornthikkadi, made with for dried copra, gingelly and nel’ is YouTube on theirseeds mobiles. ela sapaad.

For the meal ing, and doesn’t have toserved sit in rice dumplings theBut sour gongura. thegreens crucialcalled question is, on a banana is arranged front of TV atleaf 9pm to catch difthe But the crucial The Country will mysteriously journalism named actually imferently inofeach South headlines the day.

NorIndian does question is, will Captain Chicken from and the Tamil prove with this digital mostatehave andto there is anon exact order she depend an editor journalism actually Anglos has Ia believe dash of it chilli powder bile shift? already is incurate whichthe food must had. She to news shebewants: she improve with this and ginger and to pep up improving, and garlic will continue to an otherwise even remindsisyou you are done eatherthat ownwhen editor. digital and mobile bland do so, dish. though many of my coling, you must bring upper halfand of the leaf Most the journalists newsshift? I believe it The meat-loving — the author’s down to cover leagues lament the Mudaliars fall of origithe lower indicate that rooms will half pushto back against already is improving own some unusual recipes you will visit this nal, community shoe-leather— have reporting to again. brave new world, of course, like chuppal, aand marinated skewered aggregation click-bait head- lamb prepAnnapurni and is anlament unabashedly the loss non-vegetarof their own aration inspired their lines. The reasonbyfor myPersian opti- friends, and ian compilation of the recipesin of society the seven exalted position as feathe the kheema vadai, which is the mism is two-fold, both on theSouth Indian tured communities, with curators of thesome mediavegetarian narrative. version of the made with grated coco- specials production andkebab consumption sides. round up the collection.

Thereback is a Just like to brick-and-mortar retail pushes nutOn and gram. The Tamil Muslims have a chapter thegreen production side, digital technology with recipes or forblack-and-yellow the vadagams, rasam against e-commerce cabs range of the distinctive biryanis thikkadi,a and opens up doors for anyone like to become curry powders of each which lobby against Uber.

But ifcommunity, a technology is made withorrice simmered a can publisher livedumplings video streamer.

This in will be prepared ahead.

An entire is cheaper and more democratic forchapter both the lightly spiced mutton gravy, and the Sriwith Lank-a devoted break down the brahminism associated thethe intricacies of then preparing that producertoand consumer, that techan-inspired biryani. few editors idiappam at elite newspapers and TV chan- perfect South Indian filter coffee, fitnology cup will of eventually triumph.

That isa the Though many traditions like the ting nels who were ableculinary to control the media narrato this well-documented and charstoryfinale of human progress. preparation of curry and—the poundtive. Journalism — or powders storytelling is not, and mingly designed book.

Revolution is no longer in the controlled ing of rice large stone mortars are is common should notinbe rocket science.

There a story- airwaves Recipesor I tested and recommend: fish newsprint.

RevolutionNaidu has reacto all in ofeach South are subtle varia- fry, teller oneIndia, of us, there and digital technology, chops kari varuval, eggs in tamahedMudaliar everyone’s hands. tions in the of each community. coupled withrecipes the reach of social media, isThe fi- rind sauce and Kongunadu chicken fry. range of curry powders and chutneys, and a sambuddha mitra mustafi is the founder of nally democratising the space. george thesome_buddha author of The Suriani Kitchen The Political Indianist spice called have that one ingre- lathika Yes,mix there will vadagam also be riff-raff — particularly

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A movement on a missed call The cellphone has seeped into social activism, but its impact is not limitless

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holanath Biswal, 68, retired bank come aid, social activists don’t want to overes- use the cellphone judiciously. Messages are manager, is not sure how he first timate its potential. There is no substitute to sent individually to national-level convenors heard of the India against Corrup- face-to-face interaction, they say. who pass it to state-level managers, who then tion (IAC) campaign: “The television Aruna Roy’s Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangath- disseminate it further. or the radio.” But he lucidly remembers what an (MKSS) has been working in the rural borWhere the cellphone has made definite inhe did soon after. “I gave a missed call on the oughs of Rajasthan for nearly 30 years. The roads is in heightening the drama around actoll-free number and became part of the impact of the cellphone on activism is, at best, tivism. “The aspect of creating a spectacle has movement.” Protests and demonstrations had mixed, she says. “It is not a total blessing. It always been there and the cellphone has amnever featured in his life before. But fighting has, in fact, given rise to a number of prob- plified it,” says Kumar. Earlier, if NAPM memcorruption seemed worthwhile. “And I lems.” When issues are broken down to “brief bers burned a bill in Manesar, apart from the couldn’t do it single-handedly,” he says from messages, quick replies and missed calls”, we 50 who did it and the local newspapers that his village, Jagatsinghpur in Odisha. are “reducing ourselves to the lowest com- covered it, others would remain clueless.

Biswal became a regular at “Even the next district wouldn’t demonstrations and rallies orgaknow. But with WhatsApp, you nised by the IAC in the state. “I spread it to your comrades and rewould get messages about upach a wider section when it is put coming events. I took part in four on the website.” Roy picks out the or five demonstrations, includongoing Shiksha ka Sawaal Abhiing the one in front of Jagatsinghyan in Rajasthan where effort is pur collectorate and also those in on to file RTIs from 85,000 govBhubaneswar,” he says. Once IAC ernment schools. Here the mosplintered, and a part went politibile phone became a perfect cal, Biswal switched off. But as enabler. “The short film for long as it lasted, the cellphone or‘Shiksha ka Sawaal’ was shot and chestrated his participation in edited on the cellphone and has the country-wide campaign. spread everywhere through it,” With mobile phones dictating she says. daily lives, it is unlikely that soAt a recent meeting of the cial activism will remain imperviyoung Working People’s Charter ous to it. WhatsApp and bulk Process in the Capital, a WhatSMSes are coming handy when sApp group was among the dework means engaging large, unmands. The group has street organised sections of people vendors, bricklayers and domesacross the country. tic workers, as well as trade In campaigns like IAC, which unions, academicians and lawburst onto the scene and sorely yers. “We now network on the missed carefully nurtured grassphone with regional NGOs,” says roots support, the cellphone was Nirmal Gorana. The cellphone has crucial to base-building. It was been crucial to their work, he majboori, says Dilip Pandey, consays. It broke ground in rescuing venor, Aam Aadmi Party Delhi, bonded labourers from Jammu & who was earlier part of IAC. Kashmir and other places, he “Communication was our misadds. “Most of the labourers had sion and the best way to cut cellphones. They cannot read across society was the cellmessages, but we could call phone,” says Pandey. The movethem.”

On target The IAC team strategically sent emotionally-charged SMSes to their ment may not have had history, The cellphone may be great for supporters aiming to channelise public anger to the movement vv krishnan but the cause did, he asserts vehebasic information dissemination. mently. “It was a natural manifestation of peo- mon denominator,” she says.

Susan Visvanathan, professor of sociology at ple’s anger.” The team chose to channelise Roy’s activism is built on community inter- Jawaharlal Nehru University, calls it “access to public anger through powerful SMSes. Draft- actions and first-hand understanding of local unlimited quantum of information.” But ing them was serious strategy and involved issues. To her, the mobile phone can never take mere information often doesn’t translate into the entire core team. “I remember the first the place of “sitting down and talking.” “It re- numbers on the ground. “In places, say the inmessage we sent. It said something like “Aapke duces a discourse to black and white, and the teriors of Narmada, people would have got an liye ek 70 saal ka insaan bhookha ja raha hai” (A understanding it provides of an issue is super- SMS on a dharna. But it never matches the im70-year-old man is going hungry for you). Our ficial, often without looking at pact of our karyakarta sitting messages always had a heightened emotional consequences.” Nikhil Dey, also of with them and raising awarepitch. The message and the messenger mat- MKSS, knows it is ‘foolish’ to igness on an issue. If 10 people tered, so these were sent in Anna Hazareji’s nore the mobile, but is sure their turn up after field work, four If 10 people turn up name and that brought credibility,” says Pan- social activism cannot be based hardcore ones may come after after field work, four dey. At the movement’s peak, the messages are on it. So, while communication an SMS,” says Kumar. Dey points hardcore ones may supposed to have reached over a crore people with MKSS full-timers is largely out that access to the cellphone come after an SMS in 15 days to a month. “The SMS was cheaper through SMSes and photographs, often does not mean facility then — three paise per SMS,” says Pandey. In and videos and short films are alwith it. Not everyone with a Handbook of Research on Political Activism in In- so shared on WhatsApp, tradiphone can read an SMS or record formation Age, writers MV Rajeev Gowda and tional principles still rule a voice message, he says.

Purnima Prakash mention the IAC’s ‘missed activism. “We don’t see it as a substitute to While social activists acknowledge the incall’ recruitment drive. “Through this method, meetings and printing pamphlets, but one creasing prevalence of the cellphone in activthe IAC were able to generate more than five that enhances interaction,” he says. ism, there are certain roles they know it can million missed calls from unique numbers,” Cellphone-and-activism is also a matter of never play. “The cellphone, by itself, cannot they say. “Sending out bulk SMSes cost the IAC economics. Bulk SMSes need money and many initiate anything, unless it is a deep crisis like nearly ₹50 lakh, which they raised through groups find it hard to spare. “In groups sus- the December gang rape in Delhi. In normal donation from volunteers,” they add. tained by individual donations and fundrais- mobilisation, which involves struggle, it can The IAC may have squeezed the cellphone ing, it is hard to spend money on bulk SMSes,” only play a supportive part,” says Roy. dry; but older, grassroots-based movements says Madhuresh Kumar, convenor of National use it with much more caution. Though a wel- Alliance of People’s Movement (NAPM). They p anima

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READER’S DIE JEST

Six for one

Return key A field staff of microfinance company Ujjivan Financial Services records loan repayment details on his smartphone. The palmtops have stepped up the firm’s loan disbursement rate — from 80,000 a month a few years ago to three lakh currently

Hiding from the police, the beautiful, tormented actress Kay Gonda undoes the six fans who write to her, while Ayan Rand slowly loses the plot

arunava sinha

Strong signals for trade

“W

ho is Kay Gonda?”

“If you have to ask, you have lost the right to know the answer.” Without saying it in as many words, enigmatic heroine Kay-not-Greta Gonda looked at Dagny Taggart with tired eyes. “You, who have not yet been written, but will be one day when Atlas shrugs, do not be jealous of me because I came before she did not say to the one person n you,” Chanderi, the Madhya Pradesh town she did not meet night of January that gives itsthat name to the region’s16. exquiOr,site maybe it was a different date. But it hapfabric, Muzaffar Ansari’s family of penedweavers one night. is busy working on an order for Onsaris thatfrom nightJaipur.

GondaBarely rode her yet-to-be-insilk a while ago, he vented Honda — of forsamples the mantowho liveddealer only had sent images the sari for himself and on therefore did the greatest using WhatsApp his smartphone.

The degood the world was still a figment of the signs for were approved instantly and the family imagination — to the of the handful of of six set to work onhomes the saris, which will be people hadAnsari picked outhis of son the ready inwhose three letters weeks.she While and love of two millions. worknotes on the looms in their house, others knew she bring every worthy in She the family assistcould in warping, braiding and man withmany the divinity of selfishotherface-to-face processes. Like weaver families in ness that laythe within his today soul simply by looking the region, Ansaris earn about ₹800 deeply their increase eyes from the the silver screen. a day —into a sharp from ₹50 they Each of them clunguntil to their packet of popcorn, scraped together seven years ago. This refusing share itwas withbrought the woman they had change intofortune about mainly come to the theatre with. through mobile phones.

Women.

Wives or mistresses, mothers-inMiles away in Bengaluru, Murugan can’t law nuns, at comrades creatures, stopor smiling his luck. or Theadoring owner of a single all them existed only asoperates mean-spirited, nartaxiofuntil last year, he now a fleet of 10 row-minded, harridans intent onexpansion: sucking thea in the IT city. His ally in this rapid spirit out of the men companions they smartphone with thewhose Uber Partner app on it. were. could theyMurugan not be likemanages Kay Gonda, SeatedHow in his office, his who wasand abletracks to convey virtuesmovement of selfishdrivers their the real-time ness her eyes alone? usingwith his smartphone.

They cannot dupe him That,the of number course, isofwhen notor killing about trips she theywas make their the man “I who to marry her.mobile Why? location. owewanted my success to the How? And long did take income: her to renew phone,” hehow declares.

Hisitdaily over her make-up afterwards?

While the did ₹25,000, including his incentives forPress clocking not have12the answer to that mostevery important at least trips for each vehicle day. of

questions, Gonda was missing. came Howard Roark. DvE seemed to be her Except she was not. man for a while, for he had squandered the For Gonda went into the house of the hap- last of his wealth that night in a tribute to the less husband George S Perkins, who wished to absurdity of the human existence — or was shelter her from the police, as she wanted, but that Camus? — and now he wanted the two of was seduced instead by the lure of green cur- them to escape to Brazil on a ship. “Kay,” said tains into asking her to leave. Then there was Kay, but when she realised that the “zil” of Brathe Communist Chuck Fink or his father-in- zil was not on his mind, she ran away. law Jeremiah Sliney — depending on whether Only, of course, to arrive at Johnnie Dawes’s it’sAffordably the play or priced the novel that₹4,000 you’re reading — garret. from onwards Where Johnnie,them. slim Now, and from blonde, middlemen to procure the who were ready to turn her infeatures, for lucre, but proud and packing an array of useful smartnoble, withthe degrees in internetand we find outpossibly on our own most reanot before like cheap, phones arespeaking increasingly drivingsecond-hand small busi- physics philosophy, showed up sonableand price for a commodity,” he some says. time Marxist nesses textbook. and entrepreneurs, boosting their later her,travels “I’ve seen everyEven better, heand no told longer to Jaipur, What as of well the as artist Dwight Lan-fishermen in Kolkata or Benares income visibility.

From thing I want, that’s you,” for or approaches a sent middlegley, you ask? and Langley, coastal Kerala Tamilwho Nadujust to the microfi- man to get his thesari police, and shot himself designs approved.

“I dead send threw the making girl whothe loved him,of villages in my pictures after nance out official rounds the crime Gonover confessing mobile andto modifications, if While the Press did the girl whose money he hadall been interior Andhra Pradesh, of them are any, are also da had committed. discussed with clients over not have the living on —gratefully symbolising the moral clutching at their smartphones.

This convenient meant phone. This has saved us time suicide and improved answer to that bankruptcy of a rotten world bethe remaining he 3,200 pages of the productivity,” adds. most important of lieved in capitalism nor in Mobileneither slays middleman novel — 2,575this of which would have Sharing veteran weaver’s questions, Gonda genius architects orange Osama Manzar, the with founder of been Dawes’s monologue reupbeat outlook is Ismaeel, — a sari was missing. hair.

Each of Langley’s paintings Digital Empowerment Foundamained designerunwritten. in his 20s, But who Dawes works Except she was not was Gonda, sometimes tionof (DEF), points out thatdressed, in traout to be a negotiates fool, because on a computer and diI send pictures of my turned often not, but he was unable ditional skill-based clusters liketo Kay hadn’t anyone all, rectly overkilled phone withafter buyers. designs over recognise the genuine article Chanderi, Benares and Murshishe on the run has fromgone the “Mywasn’t monthly income WhatsApp and when his apart- modifications, if any, police dabad she (all walked famousinto silk-weaving after all, and Ayn Rand had up from ₹1,500 to over ₹10,000,” ment.

Served the idiot right for drinking centres), mobiles and smartlostwith the plot, after all. he says. aregin. discussed And what Kay get from the priestclients Claudeover phone phones havedid proliferated rapidThe only good Rand did with Hething has athat Facebook page forIdehis Ignatius Hixhas when she sought ly. “And that impacted accesssanctuary for al was to not publish as aupdates novel. The play was designs itand it regularly the night in his church? Weavers They could both have bad enough.using to market information.

But some meddling busybody his mobile phone.

“It is been defrocked that albeit in different had to comeeasy now know where annight, exhibition along and undo that, now to click pictures of and my prodways (nudge nudge, wink), is taking place, whatwink buyers are but Brother you have to read twice in two forms.

Exuctsiton myover, smartphone and upHix chosefor instead to advise her tomarket confessrates her cept looking and the prevailing don’t.

Because if you have toisread it, load you them on my page. The feedback quick, crime at the competing church run by a wom- you for their products.” don’t have to readon it —them whatever the hell as buyers comment immediately, anAnsari’s down the road, inbeen frontinofthe anweaving audience of that family has promeans. helping us improve the designs,” he says. thousands.

But Kay would have nun of it. with fession for seven centuries; today, armed (This monthly helps you talk about a Earlier, he soldcolumn through middlemen and reOff she went, they then, have to the eliminated ex-billionairethree Die- book smartphones, without having to read mained clueless about theit.) final selling price. trich Esterhazy (DvE)’s hotel suitewe for that Not anymore. “I am not being exploited by kindsvon of middlemen.

“To begin with, didn’t sinha classic, contemporary elusive night’s of course, she arunava know about theshelter. price orActually, availability of raw mamiddlemen astranslates my forefathers were. I sell fiction, English t@arunava was in search for and Howard he the be- Bengali terials — cotton silk Roark — andbefore needed through mynon-fiction Facebookinto page as well as through

Affordably priced and packed with an array of useful features, smartphones are increasingly driving small businesses and entrepreneurs towards steady profits and visibility

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Ideal The novel and the Play Ayn Rand Penguin ₹399

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Deepak Ayare, Chief information officer, Ujjivan Financial Services

work. From 400 a month, an agent today easily services 1,000 customers. “A customer’s data shows up the moment her ID is keyed into the system. Only the latest entry needs to be made, saving time, which is instead used to inform the customer about newer products or catering to more clients,” he adds.

Ujjivan is also using smartphones to educate agents. Rather than conducting hourlong training programmes in the office, which will lead to wasting an entire workday, Ujjivan prepares audio-video training modules and sends them to the agents’ smartphones. “They can watch them whenever they are free,” he says.

The microfinance company foots the bill for airtime and internet charges. As for the smartphone itself, the agents are given “a soft advance of ₹8,000 to buy them; we recover it in eight instalments”, Ayare says.

Message from rain gauge Further south, in God’s Own Country, John Thekkayyam has set up Radio Monsoon to share weather and climate information with the fishing community. The service uses satellite data to predict weather five days ahead, including parameters like wave height, wind speed and direction, which are crucial for fishermen. Users dial a toll-free number from their mobiles and listen to the forecast in their local language or access it through Twitter and Facebook.

A handful of fishermen are also using their mobiles to find out fish prices in various coastal markets. Before even returning to shore, they are able to finalise the best deal for their day’s catch. There is another kind of catch, though. Joseph Xavier Kalapurakal, general secretary of the All Kerala Fishing Boat OperModern twist Muzaffar Ansari’s family, which has been in the weaving profession for seven centuries in ators Association, points out that at sea the Chanderi (Madhya Pradesh), has eliminated three kinds of middlemen, thanks to smartphones; (top and inset) mobile range is limited to 15km from shore. So mobile-powered microfinance services from Ujjivan its use is restricted as of now, he says.

Nevertheless, from sea to land, the mobile Chanderiyaan (a website supported by DEF). barely managed to disburse 80,000 loans a phone signals groundbreaking advances.

The money comes to my account automatical- month, slowed down by the intensive paper- Farmers depend on mobile alerts for rainfall ly and I don’t even have to visit the bank to de- work required. “Today we can comfortably and temperature forecasts and plan their posit cash,” he says. manage three lakh loans a farming activities accordingly. A month,” says Ayare. service promoted by IFFCO Kisan A field staff collecting repayCash registers are beeping Sanchar Ltd allows farmers to For Murugan, too, banking chores are a thing ments from clients makes the dial a number to get their agriI don’t have to step of the past. “I don’t have to step out of my of- entries on a smartphone, and culture-related problems adout of my office to fice to receive money from Uber. The company the system reflects this instantly. dressed by an expert. On the receive money from makes weekly transfers to my account. Even That, in turn, helps Ujjivan calcuroad, taxi drivers are profiting Uber... it makes my vehicle instalments are deducted auto- late the cash it needs for disburfrom their association with cab weekly transfers to matically by the bank. I get SMS alerts on my sal the next day. “Cash aggregators. At the micro-level, my account mobile for all the transactions,” he adds. management has improved, small businesses in Asia’s biggest Yet another theatre for this mobile revolu- and since we know how much slum, Dharavi, are using their tion is the microfinance sector, where the money an agent is carrying, we mobiles to send products to onpalmtops have greatly improved loan disbur- sometimes send another staff line marketplaces like Snapdeal. sal, repayment collections and customer man- member to collect cash from him before the As Manzar puts it, “Mobile is not a producer, agement. Deepak Ayare, chief information end of the day,” says Ayare. but it gives access to information.” And inforofficer at Ujjivan Financial Services, says his When there is no connectivity in a village, mation, as everyone knows, is power indeed. firm’s loan disbursement rate has increased the agent makes entries on the smartphone dramatically. Until a few years ago, Ujjivan and transmits them on entering a mobile net- rashmi pratap

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rise and Mobile waalaThe pyaar fall of Nokia Nokia 2110: On July 31, the first mobile call was made in India on this handset on a Nokia-supplied network

2000

Nokia 3310: This handset was a lifesaver. Its battery lasted weeks without a recharge

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While social networks might play matchmaker, the mobile phone is the modern instrument of love

Nokia 7650: First camera on a Nokia phone. Oh! the joy

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Till recently, the one brand that has been synonymous with India’s mobile phone revolution has been Nokia. After all, which adult has never owned one? We rewind to some of the most iconic models over the last 20 years

Nokia India’s achievements 1995 — First mobile phone call made in India on a Nokia phone on a Nokia network 1998 — Saare Jahaan Se Acchha, first Indian ringtone on a Nokia 5110 2000 — First phone with a Hindi menu (Nokia 3210) 2002 — First camera phone (Nokia 7650) Coupling 2003 — First Made for India phone, Nokia 1100 Love affairs cemented 2004 — Saral Mobile Sandesh, Hindi SMS on a wide range of Nokia phones through covert 2004 — First Wi-fi phone — Nokia Communicator (N9500) conversations, and 2005 — Local UI in additional local language feverish texting, are aided by the glow of 2006 — Nokia manufacturing plant launched in Chennai 2014 — Nokia manufacturing plant shuts in Chennai the mobile phone.

Here, a couple takes a selfie at India Gate, New Delhi meeta ahlawat

he is a 21-year-old student, he a model. quite a few are willing to give up sex (for a married to Dev. She has four Facebook ids and two weekend) to hold on to their phones. HandNothing cements a relationship more than WhatsApp profiles. Last summer, an written forms of communication have been a covert conversation held in hushed tones unlikely love affair bloomed across replaced by 160-character SMSes, and social and interspersed with laughter. Love affairs the campus lawns of Banaras Hindu Universi- networks and WhatsApp groups have ren- progress, tiffs break out, and shayari happens, ty and the modelling studios of Mumbai. Shil- dered irrelevant the confidantes in whom we aided by the luminous mobile phone. But not pa* fell violently in love with the six-packer, once confided our deepest, darkest secrets. all mobile-waala pyaar have happy endings.

Nokia 2100: the sort of heady rush which is unconcerned The cellphone gave us new freedoms of pri- Nokia Take6600: the case of X and Y. Holed up for the last This handset of being online and al- Camera, with geographical distances. Texts, emojis and vacy and anonymity, month at the Love Commandos’ secret shelter camera, introduced photos were exchanged feverishly.

She got her ways available, of oversharing and in Delhi, the couple from UdaiNokia 1100: camera! Yes, white backlight friend to take pictures, wearing just her unfalling in love.

It also gave service pur district have sought proThis was the you could in 2003. And derclothes. Pose, click, clickworld’s again, choose and providers the nerveatto advertise bestcapture videos tection from their families. was priced handsetscreen. with this send. Two blue ticks on theselling WhatsApp chatting apps with cheeky camTheirs was an office romance. around The cellphone gave us When a vacancy opened up at handset He had seen the photos. at the time paign lines₹5,000 — ‘No point saying I new freedoms of He made a plan to visit her. She was ecstatic, love you if there are no witnesses’, X’s firm, he made calls to all the privacy and making lists of all her favourite haunts in Va- and ‘All our lives we’ve been told candidates who had applied anonymity, of ranasi. But the meeting never happened. He not to talk to strangers’. It is this for the job. He fell for Y at once, oversharing and called her and cancelled, his father was unex- freedom that 20-somethings Har“unki awaaz bahut achchhi lagi falling in love pectedly arriving from London. Caught in shad, Naved and (I liked her voice a lot)”. Y got Nokia N-gage: ThisShakir exercise, half-truths, heartbreaks and arguments, the sitting cycle-rickshaws at the job, and for months they phone astride satisfied all mobile gamingbaithak in Chandni affair fizzled out. Was it ever the real deal, she their Sunday sat across each other in office Nokia 6020: 3230: dreams shooting ‘blackmailing wonders now, and will probably never know.

Chowk, not saying a word.Nokia At 5pm evThis handset This phone A few years back, in a school ery day, they would return to their respective becameessay on ‘Cell videos’ of each other, flirting with their lady seemed to phone and Youth’, 20-year-old pick up the mobile and talk.

For a long popularRizwana, also loves, whose messages they check every few homes, Nokia 7610: have it all — among on how life The S shape from Varanasi, wrote eloquently minutes. It is this freedom that our domestic time, they didn’t meet outside internet, work, their office goers, of this had changed for their generation.

“I scored a help exerts when her mobile blares Do lafzon ki courtship unfolding one call at camera, a time. Last thesays handy handset joystick, nine out of 10 in the essay,”at she with pride. hai dil ki kahani and her latest boyfriend calls. year, X was and Y got married. Having run large into price of considered screen, evento “There was a time when I would wake up to the It is the sound of freedom, and of love. family trouble since then, they’ve turned ₹7,500 very sexy a USB port sound of my grandmother’s reedy voice ringNine years ago, Sunayna* was working in Love Commandos for help. ing through the house. Then I’d look at the pic- the credit card division of a bank in Delhi. Just “Facebook se pyaar shuru hota hai, aur phone tures of gods, mutter a quick prayer. Now, I out of college, this was a part-time job where pe prem ki khidki khulti hai (Romance starts wake up to vibrations, the phone always un- she took calls from harried customers and pa- with Facebook. And the window of love opens der my pillow. The first thing I do is check for tiently told them about new schemes and on the phone),” says Sanjoy Sachdev, chairman messages,” she wrote in her essay. Phone in cards. Dev* was one of them. When they dis- of the organisation that helps runaway couhand, the online world on her screen, there al- 9500 covered they shared a language, Bengali, theN70:ples. In the five years of its existence, Love Nokia Nokia ways looms the possibility of many friendofficial communication turned personal, Commandos claims to have dealt Nokia with 3110 more Every Communicator: teenager than 40,000 cases. “And almost all Classic: ships and, perhaps, even love. more familiar. He replaced the bank’s helpline of themThis beBusiness class. backbethen gan with the mobile,” he says. It seems handset This handset (or with hers. Slowly, a relationship India has 900 million mobile subscribers, number thathad the wanted 9MB of as any othergan to blossom. They spent hours talking 117 million smartphone users, and 213 million toto main protagonist of the “love revolution”, buy one as internal Communicator mobile internet users, which means 77 out of each other, often through the night. “I shared the Love Commandos call it, is not a person or it had dual storage, model) was often 100 people wield mobiles currently. A sevena room with my mother and brother.

I spoke religion but the mobile phone. cameras. which could seen in country survey released in June reveals that Somestart of (*Some names have been changed.) be expanded TV 74 serialssoftly, and mostly I would just listen to him.The the selfie... up to 2GB per cent Indians sleep with their cellphones, we movies times, the sun would come up before many take their phones into showers, and would hang up,” says Sunayna, who is now priyanka kotamraju

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Touch screen with secrets

work trips, and a large majority of the relationships were workplace romances. Interestingly, 92 per cent women (as opposed to 81 per cent men) kept their relationships secret and were not caught. And of those who did not manage it, for 77 per cent men and 62 per cent women the discovery didn’t lead to divorce.

All of this is just a statistical way of saying that infidelity is here to stay, no matter how loudly people stammer “b-b-but Indian culture.” Therefore, the freedom that a mobile provides is no longer about meeting the new lover. That’s the easy part. When in doubt, Tinder. The energy of the mobile is now mostly devoted to hiding the affair. Let’s go back to Mehra. In 2012, three years after the first affair ended, Mehra met someone else. Met is technically incorrect, the girl was his junior from college, and they found each other on Facebook.

Soon the occasional pings on messenger became frequent, they met for dinner once, and the sexual chemistry was so high that they went away together the very next weekend.

Mehra is now the president – operations of a multi-national company and he had a top-end smartphone but the machinations of an extramarital relationship, he discovered, are harder, though cheaper, the second time around.

As per company policy, his secretary had access to his business e-mail, and in an earlier emergency he had handed over his Gmail password to her as well. He opened a second account, but found it clunky to switch between three mailing apps. His girlfriend and he exchanged photos of themselves on Snapchat, but once when his wife had access to the phone as she was following the directions on Google maps while he was driving, she asked him why he had downloaded Snapchat. In the shouting match that ensued, in which he accused her of constantly being suspicious, he insisted that she delete the app then and there, and so she did.

“The new phones are an absolute nightmare,” he says, “both Android and iOS display the first two lines of the message on screen, so even if the phone is locked someone can john t takai/shutterstock quickly read the text.” Then, there is the trouble with all the photos taken on the phone.

Mehra has to remember to delete them from liked to play the then popular game ‘Snake’ on the gallery, as well as the recently deleted foldit, and he mostly refused. If at all he let them, er. And any photos or videos sent to him on he hovered around until they had played a few WhatsApp also immediately become part of rounds and then snatched it back. “Overall the gallery. “While the new smartphones although,” he says, “that phone was safe. If you low you to take the relationship to a whole got a message, it only said 1 message received new level, and I will confess the photos and and you’ve to hit three keys before opening it.” videos are a great turn-on, it is also a bit of a Even though he was exhilarated about the pain to keep it scrubbed clean,” he says. So, on freedom to text and chat privately, he was con- the advice of a friend who was in a similar sitstantly cautious. He tried various options — uation, Mehra too became a consumer of the saving her number under a company’s name, multi-billion dollar high-growth industry — saving it in a man’s name etc — apps that help you cover up an afbut eventually just committed it fair. After many trials and errors, to memory and took it off the he has settled on two. TigerText, a address book. The affair ran its messaging app in which messagIt was exhilarating, course in 2009, but Mehra can es self-destruct once they are how easy it was to still rattle the number off the read, and Vaulty Stocks, an app meet someone and top of his head. that allows you to store incrimithen build a That the mobile phone has nating pictures and videos and is relationship mostly been an enabler of relationships designed to look like an app that on the phone and secret trysts — of the intrahelps you manage your shares. or extra-marital variety — is You need a password to enter the nothing new. What is also not Vault. He has deleted Facebook surprising is the fact that infidelmessenger on the phone and ality in India is a trend as firmly established as so disabled backing up anything to the iCloud that of rising smartphone sales. In a survey from his iPad. conducted by Ashley Madison, a website and Life is better now, he says, although there is mobile app that helps married people find a caveat. “The only drawback, of course, is that lovers (slogan: life is short, have an affair), 87 the fear of discovery, which is half the thrill of per cent women and 81 per cent men in ar- an extramarital relationship, is considerably ranged marriages confessed to having had af- reduced now,” he says, “but I would rather be fairs. Of this, 81 per cent men and 68 per cent half-thrilled with my girlfriend and alive than women said the affair had positively impacted murdered by my wife.” their marriages. Like in the case of Mehra, 40 per cent of these dalliances happened on veena venugopal

Perfect ally or potential villain — app-armed smartphones can be both when it comes to extramarital affairs

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anjay Mehra (name changed) met his first post-marriage girlfriend at a company off-site in Goa. The year was 2003.

She worked in the Hyderabad office and he in Delhi and the only thing they had in common until then was group e-mails from the HR department. In Goa, in the evenings, after the day’s conference, they hung around in the infinity pool. Mehra liked her, but didn’t think much of it. He had been married then for nearly seven years, had two small kids and pretty much managed to ‘keep himself busy’ with work and home.

But a week after Goa, he was on a business trip in Mumbai, and in the hotel late in the evening, with nothing to do other than watch TV and order room service, he found himself sending text messages to the girl. “Within a week,” he says, “we were exchanging 50-60 messages a day. It was exhilarating, how easy it was to meet someone and then build a relationship mostly on the phone.” Just the SMS component of his mobile bill used to be around ₹4000.

Mehra had a Nokia handset, the one with blue light. “At home, I would put it on silent mode, but that phone had a pretty bright screen, the whole room would glow blue when a message arrived. At one point, my wife asked me why my phone was constantly buzzing at night, and I told her it was work. I’d wait for her to turn the other side, then hide the screen under the blanket and reply to the messages.” Mehra found himself getting increasingly possessive of his phone. His kids

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carry a phone there. When we meet outside school — for coffee, group studies, birthdays or just walks in the neighbourhood — we don’t huddle around cellphones. Only if there is a funny or interesting video, a new app, or maybe a good joke, you will find us looking at someone’s phone…” he explains. As for selfies, the youngster, who loves family vacations, doesn’t deny the usefulness of the mobile but doesn’t feel the need to own one immediately.

For occasional surfing and important calls, his parents are happy to let him use their phone. “They know I won’t spend hours on it,” he says. “My mother allows me to carry her phone when I am stepping out with my friends for a movie or a dinner or a get-together. It makes it easier for her to coordinate pickup and drop,” he adds.

Mukherji’s resolve to stay away from the device is bolstered by his 10-year-old brother, Shaurya, who doesn’t even show an interest in social media. “I created my Facebook account five years ago. That seemed like the must-do, must-have, and I gave in. I created one for my brother too, but he hasn’t visited his page in months. I am, by deThe constant urge to fault, his page administrator,” stay glued to the says the teen, adding that his mobile, just because mother keeps an eye on his Faceyou have one, was book activities. “I don’t have a actually stressful problem with that. In fact, I added my parents as friends years ago. They are more active on social media than us,” he says.

The ‘family’ iPad is what the brothersdipankar turn to for their share of games and apps. “We appreciate smart technology and it can be a lot of fun. But we are both conscious that the fun should not turn into addiction. That’s why Shaurya and I still spend more time playing badminton than racing cars, firing missiles or slaying demons on the iPad or computer,” says Mukherji, who loves to follow sports news.

Nor does he enjoy reading on the iPad. “I am not an avid reader,” he clarifies. He prefers auwati Ganesh figured something was that it is “dangerous to women and children”, tobiographies andon biographies more than ficthe images, porn HD is a fantastic visual amiss when her husband got himself a what isn’t often accounted for is the fact that tion.

“I still get enough time to read experience.” second smartphone. When she con- increasingly women are also consumers of magazines andas newspapers, toporn the Even as late a decade ago,thanks internet fronted him, he confessed that a What- porn. In India, with its thousands of taboos school My of mother bookshave for was thelibrary. preserve men. also Manybuys women sApp group he was on was exchanging a lot of around sex and wider cultural compulsions us.

I likeabout to turn pages, groups use bookmarks… the stories finding of snickering pornographic videos and he was worried that around women and their carnal desires, porn feeling is not thehuddled same when you aread on demale colleagues around computer their kid might accidentally stumble upon it. on the mobile provides a safe, private outlet. vices.

No Kindle iPadculturally can work that magic,” in office.

Sociallyorand conditioned The second phone was so that he could view Ganesh, and thousands of others like her, view he says. to be coy about sex, women firmly looked the these privately. Ganesh, 36, and the mother of pornography as a healthy sexual stimulus. other Notway. a huge fanthe of Apple products, healong. is sure Until smartphone came Talk to me Shubh Mukherji, 15, enjoys dinner-table conversations more than texting mukherji a seven-year-old, had watched some pornograAnd the mobile allowsdhiman them the access and that when he decides a cellphone next Nandita Singh, 43,toangetactivist and NGO phy when she was in college, at a friend’s privacy to enjoy it. With the news that the gov- year (after his the boards) or later, would worker, views prevalence ofitporn as alikely sign home, on the VCR, when the parents were out. ernment was planning a ban on pornographic be an Android device. of women finally beginning to own their sexAnd later, she had accessed some sites on the sites, Ganesh was happy her husband had the uality.

A cricket enthusiast, Mukherji’s “It has always been okay forimmediate men to be computer at home, but found it to be too risky, foresight to buy another phone. wish — other than scoring wellproposed in boardban exams sexual.

Even the on the screen too large and the possibility of “We are saving some clips on it, — is to return to isthe pitch.as“Iprotection live, dream, porn garbed of someone walking in on her not worth the risk. just in case it becomes impossibreathe cricket.

I played with seriousness women.

What theyallreally are tryWhen she discovered her husband’s second ble to stream it in the future,” in school,” heing says.

Anisinjury in men October to do protect from2014, sexphone, she demanded that he share it with she says. The phone is kept unsurgery in January this year awakened women, whohave are In India, withfollowed taboos by aually her. “He wasn’t shocked or surprised, he was der lock and key and only the meant cannot return to cricket forand anabout sex around sex and that heknowledgeable quite happy about it,” she says. two of them have access to it. other year. “The first few to weeks ofbetter,” the injury empowered ask for she cultural restrictions Now Ganesh watches porn semi-frequently.

Neha Seth (name changed), about women's were difficult.

I was afraidasIpornography won’t be ablewas to says.

As long carnal While she mostly watches it at home, when no 32, has been watching porn play he recalls. fromit his the preserveAway of men, wasteam safe. desires, porn on again,” the one is around, or sometimes in the bathroom, since she was 20. And now, she and allathe cricketing the cellNow thataction, womenhe areused accessing it, mobile provides where she can be certain her son will not acci- watches it almost entirely on her to while awaybecome his time. it certainly it has a But problem.

Even safe, privatephone outlet. dentally walk in, she does occasionally watch mobile. “If I do watch it on my didn’t feel thethe same. upper middle-class school it in public places too. “The advantage of a mo- laptop, then I scrub the history.

If not a career cricket, wants she in went to, Mukherji Singh says, hastoa bile is that it really is your small, personal But I mostly stream it on my do sports journalism.

Last year, fromAll school, class WhatsApp group. conscreen. Sometimes, my husband forwards me phone. And I don’t bother with he visited thetent NDTV in Newand Delhi and on office it is healthy wholet and wouldn’t There only six beforenohe decided to re- was some clips I watchstop thembeeping. for a minute or for deleting the months links because one else touches thrilled to learn the howmen to use the TV camsome.

“But I realised have a separate would be more 200 WhatsApp it to parents and them,” Dhiman earlier two before deleting them.than The strangest thing turn my phone.

If theyShyamla do, I murder she says. eras andwhich otherisequipment. group, pretty much entirely devoted year.Seth “I getfinds distracted easily… the constant on atoschool was, oncemessages I was waiting meet agroup client,in at the her this When something interesting, she to “On group, onethe of so-called the few pornthe andWhatsApp dirty jokes.

So, even to the stay link gluedwith to the mobile, justeither because space a few hours.

And most wereI urge office, and withof some 20 minutes to kill, shares her friends on topics of discussion I enjoyed wasissports.

We progressive elite in this country obsessed of little myself or no interest to me,aand yet, Iwith was starhave one, was actually stressful.

It didn’t found streaming video, the you email or WhatsApp. She herself receives a cou- were sportspersons, conwith discussing the notionmatches, of ‘protecting’ the women ing at the cellphone.”

Shubh Mukherji, who take tooalong realise be happier phone muted.

It was fun.

But when the client’s ple ofme links weektofrom herthat set ofI’dfriends.

Seth troversies, etc. The phone kept buzzing during from pornography.

It’s absurd,” she says.

So turned 15 came this May, about what en- without it,” he says. secretary overistoclear say her boss washe ready is a vociferous endorser of high-definition big, important Butfor in the keeping Singh started a matches. porn group girls. track “And Among closest friends them — withor some diffi- of joys “Conversations, regular to seeinstead: me, I remember feelingstories, disoriented for porn.

Shehis either Torrents streams I lostthick moments liveshe acthethose linksmessages, are coming and of fast,” dinner-table chit-chats, air.” culty restricts theher count to eight — there are tion a few seconds,” she saysand withfresh a laugh. themhe directly from phone.

“Once you HD, on“pun TV.” fully intended.” winks, The Class X student of Lotus Valley Internawho don’t useback,” a cellphone.

Pornography accounts for over 50 per cent five there is no going she says,“My “it best is thebudreal tional Gurgaon, used thenarrative cellphone school and no one allowed to veenasengupta venugopal of dataSchool, traffic.in And while the easy is dies deal.are Thefrom quality of the video, the is sharpness of aditi

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What women watch Digital pornography is no longer the preserve of the Indian male

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Not one to sit and stare

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The Gurgaon teen who used a cellphone for only six months before deciding to return it to his parents

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Photography starts now Leading photo-artist and bookmaker Dayanita Singh on how cellphones have made photography a universal and democratic language

A selfie with Nehru

dipankar

A thousand words Dayanita Singh uses her mobile phone for instagram and WhatsApp and finds that the latter has replaced letter-writing for her dayanita singh

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ellphones have made photography The difference with mobile phone photogHere is my photo tutorial for mobile into what it always set out to be: a raphy is that people photograph with differphones. I call it LBC universal and democratic lan- ent intentions: people are not necessarily Light — Watch the light falling on what guage. Everyone who has a mobile looking for ‘good’ photographs but for what is phone can participate in a conversation with most important to them. So the range of what you are drawn to photograph. Move images, regardless of the verbal language that is considered ‘photo worthy’ gets expanded yourself around the ‘subject’ to see if you they speak. Photography works at its best and, through this, new forms will emerge. might get better light. Move not just leftPrimethat Minister Mo- those when it caniven ‘capture’ whichNarendra has no words.

Indira Gandhi, who no doubt This isofwhat photography needs — newwould forms who grimly his hordes force cultural to-right butallows up-and-down as to well.

Almost a di’s penchantsays — some would cansay forever It is when photography what words bethe RBFlimits in allofher (If you don’t homogenisation that push theselfies. medium. upon the rest of us. dance around the ‘object’. near-obsession — for taking selfies, not even begin to express that it becomes a dif- know that RBFmainly stands with for Resting Bitchhow Face, I still work film. I like it Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Modi’s selfie with Background —LiThen look taken at what is in with towering leaders on the please ferent formbeofitcommunication. proceed the next article.)each One frame imag- Chinese slows me down,tohow considered Premier Keqiang, at Beijing’s the background, does it enhance your global like the president of cannot Mongolia or ines This stage has implications that we even herI use doing RBF with Henry is. But, my mobile phone for Kissinger’s instagram Temple of Heaven, in which the two Asian freimage jostled or take shoulders away. Again around to with in Seoul, onecould won- head knownon-resident at this time.auntyjis Imagine how this trapped under her arm. Heck, she were nemies and WhatsApp. I particularly enjoy ifWhatsApp asmove if to grab advansee if you can find the most appropriate ders what kindofofilliteracy, selfies as hispeople predecessors change our idea who are around she might have dyed the white as it hastoday, certainly replaced letter-writing for tage at the Line of Control, actually reveals the backdrop, theand leastselfless distracting. might have taken the cellphone been in- streak ‘not literate’ couldhad communicate with imagin her hair something psychedelic foran a large-hearted me. When I think of someone, I send them Modi,Same unlike the danceselfie-obsessed as for the light. vented a lot earlier. es! Imagine if we could one day kick-ass socialimage mediathat DP. I hope also transmits other ones around the world.

Oura first PM, dictionary JawaharlalofNehru have Hamlyn im- would no Though herhow son Rajiv if he I am seems feelingasat thewould time OrCorners maybe the real Modi selfie that — Look to the edges ofwill thebe takdoubt shot a selfie or three ages? have A language where thewith Edwina have been a natural at selfies, one enframe (something that somehow conveys more one day with Pakistani counterandwill see be what is his in the corners.

Do Mountbatten, both of them surreptitiously can only imagine words are images. during hisI part, thanhim justtaking whereselfies I am and what Nawaz Sharif: at a discotheque you want it, does it add something, can loo, It is in this overlap stealing Teensay Murti Bhawan. days as a pilot, In thisa smoke sense, behind one could with a stewardess inone the of cockam doing).

This is just the making the duck-face in the bathroom mirror, you move in or away to make the edges of still and movie that One can also picture him taking a selfie with pit. As for PVways ‘photography starts now’.

Narasimha Rao, one imagines their bandhgalas recklessly open a few buttons that I think photographs more defined? Personally, I think the image the new definition of Mohd Ali Jinnah,photography both of them biting into op- him deliberately Professional as the ‘blurry selfie,’ will posting start replacing words in down from the collar. Even I’d light a candle at is about what is left out of the frame. a photographer posite ends burger we knew it,of asaapulled careerpork choice, is on Marine with only hisgeneral Jabba the Hutt communication.

The Wagah border for that. could emerge Breathe — Just a breath twoto first Drive; perhaps a selfie could certainly in a such difficult place.

In have helped pout in focus.WhatsApp photo is like a postOr take perhaps Modi or needs prevent Partition.people can take most situations Yet it is only with card, butModi I alsothat send very still vidtake a few selfies home, across before making the image.

Andattake just Somehow one imagines their own photographs, so Atal the Bihari Vaj- the prime ministerial selfie eos so I can sendhas sound as well as thetopolitical aisle.

Onemore, could be one ‘shot’. slow down even Perhaps Modi needs to Or payee would instagramming his favou- come into its moving need for the prefer paid photographer own. Perhaps it and is sometimes images, Naveen Patnaik riding a tripod!him Slowand down. first take a fewuse selfies rite — samosas jalebis (you can’t is nofood longer there. Weand see this most of all in because he shares many charonly audio.

So thesocellphone gives me three across the Olive Ridley sea turtles into the at home, finish yours? I’ll take too) — than having photo-journalism, as that photography has now acteristics withtothat quintessendifferent ways communicate.

Bay of Bengal; another could be political aisle to take aaselfie with deputylanguage.

Lal Krish- tialThisselfie-taking become public acthis anddour a ‘people’s’ American then leads me to the idea of the ‘mov- that can workhim as anand editor.

Perhaps editing is Arvind Kejriwal prena Advani, especially Sushma Swaraj oc- egghead Anyone who is ‘there’ with and has a mobile phone Kim Kardashian.

Both ing still image’.

In the digital world, when the something photographers willQuidditch have to learn tending to play on casionally Agra-summit can make photo-bombing a photographicthem record, so it is no are smart inbetween expanding difference stilltheir andapmovie is just a to do for themselves.

How to make a poemhim out their brooms; or perhaps style.

Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif peal longerPerhaps only the prerogative of the professionto the younger audiences, button, perhaps the form of the future will be of their collection ‘words’. Singh Yadav on and of Mulayam would have persuaded Vajpayee to take ‘seat- whether al photographer.

We have recently seena great it be on television the voting a still moving image, or a or stillinimage with theWhile myKabaddi tips withLeague LBC (see box) floor following at an Indian match; belt’ selfie while still on the Lahore photography published which was bus. made with booth. obviously think noon end ofphone: them- or sound. Both (All this is so easily done the might you make photographs on the him help and Nitish Kumar enjoying a plate of prime ministerial selfies would have selves. theSome phone camera.

Documentary photograKardashian is Queen of the Outrathink ofIfwhen, by mistake, you think you have delicious phone, it does not make you the of the litti chokha; or him andauthor Mamata, sitbeen HD Gowda forever geous phy, orpredictable: the archiving of Deve our time, will remain Dress, Modi is actually King with his ting made a still image but have recorded work.onThat ‘something else’, that indefinable deckchairs in the middle of the Sunposting the just-woke-up selfiethe or possibility even the preas important as ever. It is just to name-embroidered, gold-pinstriped suit. a movie.) This in itself changes the idea of Oh, the derbans, quality, that which apple makes martinis; the image or linger sipping an tending-to-be-asleep selfie, which is the most make a living from this that will change, un- and neither of How themthen havecan read a book, ever; at-the-gym photographer. a photography and give it selfie resonance, is veryGandhi hard toand articuwith Rahul his phoney in the world, given that you have and less it is selfie reinvented. they are likely proud school not teach film?

It isofinthat. this very overlap, iron-pumped late. It comes, brother-in-law. perhaps, from a honing of intuito So, be while awakephotography and conscious to be taking the of Hopefully, becomes a people’s Modi’s selfies a The Picture still and movie, that the have new definition ofofa tion.

Which, in that turn,to comes from governall the Modi could do try and make damn selfie and of yourself sleeping.most All ofpeople Man- Dorian movement the language Gray quality them. In Oscar Wilde’s ance photographer couldto emerge. experience you bring, it isgo theabroad, experia lot easier.

Or hewhether could just mohan Singh’s would, nophotographer doubt, be of novel, speak, what willselfies a professional titular character Whatthe wenarcissistic do miss in this world floodedkeeps with maybe ence you through cintogather Lithuania or to literature, Zimbabwe,travel, for what his distinct silhouette, and includenot So- his become?

But, of course, as would with writing, youth and beautyWhether intact while images are editors. that his canportrait, happen better ema, or through living life.

In that wayjust to express vasudhaiva kutumbakam nia Gandhi giving him ‘stinkI eye’ — phothat painted everyone who writes is the a writer. think byorBasil in a remains most terrias an app stillHallward, requires aages person to than technology cannot help, and in that there are through your cellphone camera. round-eyed freeze-glare that ce- fyingly tography will become the rawHollywood material, and manner. One wonders whatofone be seen,ugly but someone has to make sense all no short-cuts. lebs are often caught giving another. the ‘photographer’ will makeone new forms from might see inofaimages cellphone takenout Modi’s the billions thatthat’s we throw each aditya sinha has written Kashmir: The Vajpayee with dulat maddox As told to as georgina Possibly this ‘clay’. the best selfies would have been selfie: notI am a shining, smiling PM,have but an a man day. Still, surprised we do not app Years

The prime ministerial selfie may have come into its own with Narendra Modi, but what if his predecessors had access to it too?

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Close call A Kuttipadam resident in conversation with his family

Being social A shop announces help in Bengali for Facebook virgins

Family affairs Migrants use mobile transfers to send money home

Screen connect Life after work

Homely tunes This electronics store offers to download songs from Bengali ďŹ lms

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Home network Kuttipadam, a migrants’ village near Kochi, is almost synonymous with cellphone shops

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village full of migrant workers — from Bihar, West Bengal, Odisha and Assam — Kuttipadam, about 45km from Kochi’s main town area, is home to around 30 cellphone shops and little else. And the money that keeps these shops running comes from the migrants who may not visit their families for years.

The nondescript village doesn’t even have a decent road connection with Kochi. What it has in plenty are cheap China-made mobile phones, mostly in the price range of ₹1,5002,000. Only the contractors and the supervisors can afford the more expensive models.

Apart from making phone calls, Kuttipa-

dam residents use their mobiles for money transfer. According to a report in The Times of India, a migrant sends home anything between ₹10,000 and ₹20,000 a month. The high demand for cash transfer is one of the main reasons behind the mushrooming of cellphone outlets in some of the other neighbourhoods like Perumbavoor, also near Kochi, which is home to many workers who are in Kerala to find work.

Shopkeepers also help mobile users download songs from regional films and manage their Facebook pages. thulasi kakkat

Money matters A rate card for cash transfers through mobile phones

Cable guys A peek inside one of the 30 mobile shops in Kuttipadam that thrive on the migrant worker’s need to stay in touch with home

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carry a phone there. When we meet outside school — for coffee, group studies, birthdays or just walks in the neighbourhood — we don’t huddle around cellphones. Only if there is a funny or interesting video, a new app, or maybe a good joke, you will find us looking at someone’s phone…” he explains. As for selfies, the youngster, who loves family vacations, doesn’t deny the usefulness of the mobile but doesn’t feel the need to own one immediately.

For occasional surfing and important calls, his parents are happy to let him use their phone. “They know I won’t spend hours on it,” he says. “My mother allows me to carry her phone when I am stepping out with my friends for a movie or a dinner or a get-together. It makes it easier for her to coordinate pickup and drop,” he adds.

Mukherji’s resolve to stay away from the device is bolstered by his 10-year-old brother, Shaurya, who doesn’t even show an interest in social media. “I created my Facebook account five years ago. That seemed like the must-do, must-have, and I gave in. I created one for my brother too, but he hasn’t visited his page in months. I am, by deThe constant urge to fault, his page administrator,” stay glued to the says the teen, adding that his mobile, just because mother keeps an eye on his Faceyou have one, was book activities. “I don’t have a actually stressful problem with that. In fact, I added my parents as friends years ago. They are more active on social media than us,” he says.

The ‘family’ iPad is what the brothersdipankar turn to for their share of games and apps. “We appreciate smart technology and it can be a lot of fun. But we are both conscious that the fun should not turn into addiction. That’s why Shaurya and I still spend more time playing badminton than racing cars, firing missiles or slaying demons on the iPad or computer,” says Mukherji, who loves to follow sports news.

Nor does he enjoy reading on the iPad. “I am not an avid reader,” he clarifies. He prefers auwati Ganesh figured something was that it is “dangerous to women and children”, tobiographies andon biographies more than ficthe images, porn HD is a fantastic visual amiss when her husband got himself a what isn’t often accounted for is the fact that tion.

“I still get enough time to read experience.” second smartphone. When she con- increasingly women are also consumers of magazines andas newspapers, the Even as late a decade ago,thanks internettoporn fronted him, he confessed that a What- porn. In India, with its thousands of taboos school Myof mother books for was thelibrary. preserve men. also Manybuys women have sApp group he was on was exchanging a lot of around sex and wider cultural compulsions us.

I likeabout to turn pages, groups use bookmarks… the stories finding of snickering pornographic videos and he was worried that around women and their carnal desires, porn feeling is not thehuddled same when you aread on demale colleagues around computer their kid might accidentally stumble upon it. on the mobile provides a safe, private outlet. vices.

No Kindle iPadculturally can work conditioned that magic,” in office.

Sociallyorand The second phone was so that he could view Ganesh, and thousands of others like her, view he says. to be coy about sex, women firmly looked the these privately. Ganesh, 36, and the mother of pornography as a healthy sexual stimulus. other Notway. a huge fanthe of smartphone Apple products, healong. is sure Until came Talk to me Shubh Mukherji, 15, enjoys dinner-table conversations than texting mukherji a seven-year-old, had watched some pornograAnd themore mobile allowsdhiman them the access and that when he decides a cellphone next Nandita Singh, 43, toangetactivist and NGO phy when she was in college, at a friend’s privacy to enjoy it. With the news that the gov- year (after his the boards) or later, would worker, views prevalence ofitporn as alikely sign home, on the VCR, when the parents were out. ernment was planning a ban on pornographic be an Android device. of women finally beginning to own their sexAnd later, she had accessed some sites on the sites, Ganesh was happy her husband had the uality.

A cricket enthusiast, Mukherji’s “It has always been okay forimmediate men to be computer at home, but found it to be too risky, foresight to buy another phone. wish — other sexual. than scoring well in boardban exams Even the proposed on the screen too large and the possibility of “We are saving some clips on it, — is to return to isthe pitch.as“Iprotection live, dream, porn garbed of someone walking in on her not worth the risk. just in case it becomes impossibreathe cricket.

I played with seriousness women.

What theyallreally are tryWhen she discovered her husband’s second ble to stream it in the future,” in school,” heing says.

Anisinjury in men October to do protect from2014, sexphone, she demanded that he share it with she says. The phone is kept unsurgery in January this year awakened women, whohave are In India, withfollowed taboos by aually her. “He wasn’t shocked or surprised, he was der lock and key and only the meant cannot return to cricket anknowledgeable about sexforand around sex and that he quite happy about it,” she says. two of them have access to it. other year.

“The first few weeks of the injury empowered to ask for better,” she cultural restrictions Now Ganesh watches porn semi-frequently.

Neha Seth (name changed), about women's were difficult.

I was afraid won’t be ablewas to says.

As long asIpornography carnal While she mostly watches it at home, when no 32, has been watching porn play again,” the he recalls. fromit his preserveAway of men, wasteam safe. desires, porn on the one is around, or sometimes in the bathroom, since she was 20. And now, she and allathe cricketing the cellNow thataction, womenhe areused accessing it, mobile provides where she can be certain her son will not acci- watches it almost entirely on her to while awaybecome his time. it certainly it has a But problem.

Even safe, privatephone outlet. dentally walk in, she does occasionally watch mobile. “If I do watch it on my didn’t feel thethe same. upper middle-class school it in public places too. “The advantage of a mo- laptop, then I scrub the history.

If not a career cricket, wants she in went to, Mukherji Singh says, has toa bile is that it really is your small, personal But I mostly stream it on my do sports journalism.

Last year, fromAll school, class WhatsApp group. conscreen. Sometimes, my husband forwards me phone. And I don’t bother with he visited the NDTV in Newand Delhi and tent on office it is healthy wholet and wouldn’t There only the six months before decided to re- was some clips I watchstop thembeeping. for a minute or for deleting links because nohe one else touches thrilled to learn the howmen to use the TV camsome.

“But I realised have a separate would be more 200 WhatsApp it to parents andthem,” Dhiman earlier two before deleting them.than The strangest thing turn my phone.

If they Shyamla do, I murder she says. eras and otherisequipment. group, which pretty much entirely devoted year.Seth “I getfinds distracted easily… the constant on atoschool the this was, oncemessages I was waiting meet agroup client,in at her When something interesting, she to “On group, onethe of so-called the few pornthe andWhatsApp dirty jokes.

So, even to the stay link gluedwith to the mobile, just because space a few hours.

And most wereI urge office, and withofsome 20 minutes to kill, shares her friends either on topics of discussion I enjoyed wasissports.

We progressive elite in this country obsessed of little myself or no interest to me,aand yet, Iwith was starhave one, was actually stressful.

It didn’t found streaming video, the you email or WhatsApp. She herself receives a cou- were sportspersons, conwith discussing the notionmatches, of ‘protecting’ the women ing at muted. the cellphone.”

Shubh Mukherji, who take tooalong realise be happier phone It was fun.

But when the client’s ple ofme links weekto from herthat set ofI’dfriends.

Seth troversies, etc. The phone kept buzzing during from pornography.

It’s absurd,” she says.

So turned 15 came this May, about what en- without it,” he says. secretary overistoclear say her boss washe ready is a vociferous endorser of high-definition big, important Butfor in the keeping Singh started a matches. porn group girls. track “And Among closest friendsthem — withor some diffi- of joys “Conversations, regular to seeinstead: me, I remember feeling stories, disoriented for porn.

Shehis either Torrents streams I lostthick moments liveshe acthethose linksmessages, are coming and of fast,” dinner-table chit-chats, air.” culty restricts theher count to eight — there are tion a few seconds,” she says and withfresh a laugh. themhe directly from phone.

“Once you HD, on“pun TV.” fully intended.” winks, The Class X student of Lotus Valley Internawho don’t useback,” a cellphone. best Pornography accounts for over 50 per cent five there is no going she says,“My “it is thebudreal tional Gurgaon, used thenarrative cellphone school and no one allowed of to aditi veenasengupta venugopal of dataSchool, traffic.in And while the easy is dies deal.are Thefrom quality of the video, the is sharpness

Q R

What women watch Digital pornography is no longer the preserve of the Indian male

S

Not one to sit and stare

Q

The Gurgaon teen who used a cellphone for only six months before deciding to return it to his parents

“I

R

ND-X _ A

BL

cover

saturday, august 15, 2015

Photography starts now Leading photo-artist and bookmaker Dayanita Singh on how cellphones have made photography a universal and democratic language

A selfie with Nehru

dipankar

A thousand words Dayanita Singh uses her mobile phone for instagram and WhatsApp and finds that the latter has replaced letter-writing for her dayanita singh

C G

ellphones have made photography The difference with mobile phone photogHere is my photo tutorial for mobile into what it always set out to be: a raphy is that people photograph with differphones. I call it LBC universal and democratic lan- ent intentions: people are not necessarily Light — Watch the light falling on what guage. Everyone who has a mobile looking for ‘good’ photographs but for what is phone can participate in a conversation with most important to them. So the range of what you are drawn to photograph. Move images, regardless of the verbal language that is considered ‘photo worthy’ gets expanded yourself around the ‘subject’ to see if you they speak. Photography works at its best and, through this, new forms will emerge. might get better light. Move not just leftPrimethat Minister Mo- those when it caniven ‘capture’ whichNarendra has no words.

Indira Gandhi, who no doubt This isof what photography needs — new would forms who grimly his hordes force cultural to-right butallows up-and-down as to well.

Almost a di’s penchantsays — some would cansay forever It is when photography what words bethe RBFlimits in allofher (If you don’t homogenisation that push theselfies. medium. upon the rest of us. dance around the ‘object’. near-obsession — for taking selfies, not even begin to express that it becomes a dif- know that RBFmainly standswith for Resting Bitchhow Face, I still work film. I like it Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Modi’s selfie with Background —LiThen look taken at what is in with towering leaders on the please ferent formbe ofitcommunication. proceed the next article.)each One frame imag- Chinese slows me down,tohow considered Premier Keqiang, at Beijing’s the background, does it enhance your global like the president of cannot Mongolia or ines This stage has implications that we even her doing RBF with Henry is. But, I use my mobile phone for Kissinger’s instagram Temple of Heaven, in which the two Asian freimage or take shoulders away. Againasmove around to with in how Seoul,this onecould won- head knownon-resident at this time.auntyjis Imagine trapped under her arm. Heck, she were nemies and WhatsApp. I particularly enjoy ifWhatsApp jostled if to grab advansee if you can find the most appropriate ders what kindofofilliteracy, selfies as hispeople predecessors change our idea who are around she might have dyed the white as it hastoday, certainly replaced letter-writing for tage at the Line of Control, actually reveals the backdrop, theand leastselfless distracting. might have taken the cellphone been in- streak ‘not literate’ couldhad communicate with imagin her hair something psychedelic forana large-hearted me. When I think of someone, I send them Modi,Same unlike the danceselfie-obsessed as for the light. vented a lot earlier. es! Imagine if we could one day kick-ass socialimage mediathat DP. I hope also transmits other ones around the world.

Oura first PM, dictionary JawaharlalofNehru have Hamlyn im- would no Though herhow son IRajiv if he am seems feelingasat thewould time Or maybe the real Modi selfie that Corners — Look to the edges ofwill the be takdoubt shot a selfie or three ages? have A language where thewith Edwina have been a natural at selfies, somehowmore one en (something that conveys one day with Pakistani counterframe and will see be what is his in the corners.

Do Mountbatten, both of them surreptitiously can only imagine words are images. during hisI part, thanhim justtaking whereselfies I am and what Nawaz Sharif: at a discotheque you want it, does it add something, can loo, It is in this overlap stealing Teensay Murti Bhawan. days as a pilot, In thisa smoke sense, behind one could with a stewardess inone theof cockam doing).

This is just the making the duck-face in the bathroom mirror, you move in or away to make the edges of still and movie that One can also picture him taking a selfie with pit. As for PVways ‘photography starts now’.

Narasimha Rao, one imagines their bandhgalas recklessly open a few buttons that I think photographs more defined? Personally, I think the image the new definition of Mohd Ali Jinnah,photography both of them as biting into op- him deliberately Professional the ‘blurry selfie,’ will posting start replacing words in down from the collar. Even I’d light a candle at is about what is left out of the frame. a photographer posite ends burger we knew it, of asaapulled careerpork choice, is on Marine with only hisgeneral Jabba the Hutt communication.

The Wagah border for that. could emerge Breathe — Just a breath twoto first Drive; perhaps a selfie could certainly in a such difficult place.

In have helped pout in focus.WhatsApp photo is like a postOr take perhaps Modi or needs prevent Partition.people can take most situations Yet it is only with card, butModi I also that send very still vidtake a few selfies home, before making the image.

Andattake justacross Somehow one imagines their own photographs, so Atal the Bihari Vaj- the prime ministerial selfie eos so I can sendhas soundPerhaps as well as thetopolitical aisle.

Onemore, could be ‘shot’. slow down even Modi one needs to Or payee would instagramming his favou- come into itsmoving need for the prefer paid photographer own. Perhaps it and is sometimes images, Naveen Patnaik riding use a tripod!him Slowand down. first take a few selfies rite — samosas jalebis (you can’t is nofood longer there. Weand see this most of all in because he shares many charonly audio.

So thesocellphone gives me three across the Olive Ridley sea turtles into the at home, finish yours? I’ll take too) — than having photo-journalism, as that photography has now acteristics withtothat quintessendifferent ways communicate.

Bay of Bengal; another could be political aisle to take aaselfie with deputylanguage.

Lal Krish- tialThis selfie-taking become public acthis anddour a ‘people’s’ American then leads me to the idea of the ‘mov- that can workhim as anand editor.

Perhaps editing is Arvind Kejriwal prena Advani, Sushma Swaraj oc- egghead Anyone whoespecially is ‘there’ with and has a mobile phone Kim Kardashian.

Both ing still image’.

In the digital world, when the something photographers will Quidditch have to learn tending to play on casionally Agra-summit can make photo-bombing a photographic them record, so it is no are smart inbetween expanding difference stilltheir andapmovie is just a to do for themselves.

How to make a poemhim out their brooms; or perhaps style.

Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif peal longerPerhaps only the prerogative of the professionto perhaps the younger audiences, button, the form of the future will be of their collection ‘words’. Singh Yadav on and of Mulayam would have persuaded Vajpayee to take ‘seat- whether al photographer.

We have recently seena great it be on television or inimage the voting a still moving image, or a still with theWhile myKabaddi tips withLeague LBC (see box) floor following at an Indian match; belt’ selfie while still on the Lahore bus. with booth. photography published which was made obviously think noon end ofphone: them- or sound. Both (All this is so easily done the might you make photographs on the him help and Nitish Kumar enjoying a plate of prime ministerial selfies would have selves. theSome phone camera.

Documentary photograKardashian is Queen of the Outrathink ofIfwhen, by mistake, you think you have delicious phone, it does not make you the of the litti chokha; or him andauthor Mamata, sitbeen HD Gowda forever geous phy, orpredictable: the archiving of Deve our time, will remain Dress, Modi is actually King with his ting made a still image but have recorded work.onThat ‘something else’, that indefinable deckchairs in the middle of the Sunposting the just-woke-up selfie orpossibility even the preas important as ever. It is just the to name-embroidered, suit. a movie.) This in itselfgold-pinstriped changes the idea of Oh, the derbans, quality, that which apple makes martinis; the image or linger sipping an tending-to-be-asleep selfie, which is the most make a living from this that will change, un- and neither of How themthen havecan read a book, ever; at-the-gym photographer. a photography and give it selfie resonance, is veryGandhi hard toand articuwith Rahul his phoney in the world, given that you have and less it is selfie reinvented. they are likely proud school not teach film?

It isofinthat. this very overlap, iron-pumped late. It comes, brother-in-law. perhaps, from a honing of intuito So, be while awakephotography and conscious to be taking the of Hopefully, becomes a people’s Modi’s selfies a The Picture still and movie, that the have new definition ofofa tion.

Which, in that turn,to comes from governall the Modi could do try and make damn selfie and of yourself sleeping.most All ofpeople Man- Dorian movement the language Gray quality them. In Oscar Wilde’s ance photographer couldto emerge. experience you bring, it is go theabroad, experia lot easier.

Or hewhether could just mohan Singh’s would, nophotographer doubt, be of novel, speak, what willselfies a professional titular character Whatthe wenarcissistic do miss in this world floodedkeeps with maybe ence you through travel, cintogather Lithuania or toliterature, Zimbabwe, for what his distinct silhouette, and includenot So- his become?

But, of course, as would with writing, youth beauty intact while images areand editors.

Whether that his canportrait, happen better ema, or through living life.

In that wayjust to express vasudhaiva kutumbakam nia Gandhi giving him ‘stinkI eye’ — phothat painted everyone who writes is the a writer. think byorBasil in aremains most terrias an app stillHallward, requires aages person to than technology cannot help, and in that there are through your cellphone camera. round-eyed ce- fyingly tography willfreeze-glare become thethat rawHollywood material, and manner. One wonders whatofone be seen,ugly but someone has to make sense all no short-cuts. lebs are often caught giving another. the ‘photographer’ will makeone new forms from might see inofaimages cellphone taken Modi’s the billions thatthat’s we throw out each aditya sinha has written Kashmir: The Vajpayee with dulat maddox As told to as georgina Possibly this ‘clay’. the best selfies would have been selfie: notI am a shining, smiling PM,have but an a man day. Still, surprised we do not app Years

The prime ministerial selfie may have come into its own with Narendra Modi, but what if his predecessors had access to it too?

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rise and Mobile waalaThe pyaar fall of Nokia Nokia 2110: On July 31, the first mobile call was made in India on this handset on a Nokia-supplied network

2000

Nokia 3310: This handset was a lifesaver. Its battery lasted weeks without a recharge

2002

1995

While social networks might play matchmaker, the mobile phone is the modern instrument of love

Nokia 7650: First camera on a Nokia phone. Oh! the joy

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Till recently, the one brand that has been synonymous with India’s mobile phone revolution has been Nokia. After all, which adult has never owned one? We rewind to some of the most iconic models over the last 20 years

Nokia India’s achievements 1995 — First mobile phone call made in India on a Nokia phone on a Nokia network 1998 — Saare Jahaan Se Acchha, first Indian ringtone on a Nokia 5110 2000 — First phone with a Hindi menu (Nokia 3210) 2002 — First camera phone (Nokia 7650) Coupling 2003 — First Made for India phone, Nokia 1100 Love affairs cemented 2004 — Saral Mobile Sandesh, Hindi SMS on a wide range of Nokia phones through covert 2004 — First Wi-fi phone — Nokia Communicator (N9500) conversations, and 2005 — Local UI in additional local language feverish texting, are aided by the glow of 2006 — Nokia manufacturing plant launched in Chennai 2014 — Nokia manufacturing plant shuts in Chennai the mobile phone.

Here, a couple takes a selfie at India Gate, New Delhi meeta ahlawat

he is a 21-year-old student, he a model. quite a few are willing to give up sex (for a married to Dev. She has four Facebook ids and two weekend) to hold on to their phones. HandNothing cements a relationship more than WhatsApp profiles. Last summer, an written forms of communication have been a covert conversation held in hushed tones unlikely love affair bloomed across replaced by 160-character SMSes, and social and interspersed with laughter. Love affairs the campus lawns of Banaras Hindu Universi- networks and WhatsApp groups have ren- progress, tiffs break out, and shayari happens, ty and the modelling studios of Mumbai. Shil- dered irrelevant the confidantes in whom we aided by the luminous mobile phone. But not pa* fell violently in love with the six-packer, once confided our deepest, darkest secrets. all mobile-waala pyaar have happy endings.

6600: Nokia 2100: the sort of heady rush which is unconcerned The cellphone gave us new freedoms of pri- Nokia Take the case of X and Y. Holed up for the last This handset of being online and al- Camera, with geographical distances. Texts, emojis and vacy and anonymity, month at the Love Commandos’ secret shelter camera, introduced photos were exchanged feverishly.

She got her ways available, of oversharing and in Delhi, the couple from UdaiNokia 1100: camera! Yes, white backlight friend to take pictures, wearing just her unfalling in love.

It also gave service pur district have sought proThis was the you could in 2003. And derclothes. Pose, click, click again, choose and providers the nerveatto advertise world’s bestcapture videos tection from their families. was priced handset screen. with this send. Two blue ticks on theselling WhatsApp chatting apps with cheeky camTheirs was an office romance. around The cellphone gave us When a vacancy opened up at handset He had seen the photos. at the time paign lines₹5,000 — ‘No point saying I new freedoms of He made a plan to visit her. She was ecstatic, love you if there are no witnesses’, X’s firm, he made calls to all the privacy and making lists of all her favourite haunts in Va- and ‘All our lives we’ve been told candidates who had applied anonymity, of ranasi. But the meeting never happened. He not to talk to strangers’. It is this for the job. He fell for Y at once, oversharing and called her and cancelled, his father was unex- freedom that 20-somethings Har“unki awaaz bahut achchhi lagi falling in love pectedly arriving from London. Caught in shad, Naved and (I liked her voice a lot)”. Y got Nokia N-gage: ThisShakir exercise, half-truths, heartbreaks and arguments, the sitting cycle-rickshaws at the job, and for months they phone astride satisfied all mobile gamingbaithak in Chandni affair fizzled out. Was it ever the real deal, she their Sunday sat across each other in office Nokia 6020: 3230: dreams shooting ‘blackmailing wonders now, and will probably never know.

Chowk, not saying a word.Nokia At 5pm evThis handset This phone A few years back, in a school ery day, they would return to their respective becameessay on ‘Cell videos’ of each other, flirting with their lady seemed to phone and Youth’, 20-year-old pick up the mobile and talk.

For a long popularRizwana, also loves, whose messages they check every few homes, Nokia 7610: have it all — among on how life The S shape from Varanasi, wrote eloquently minutes. It is this freedom that our domestic time, they didn’t meet outside internet, work, their office goers, of this had changed for their generation.

“I scored a help exerts when her mobile blares Do lafzon ki courtship unfolding one call at camera, a time. Last thesays handy handset joystick, nine out of 10 in the essay,”at she with pride. hai dil ki kahani and her latest boyfriend calls. year, X was and Y got married. Having runlarge into price of considered screen, evento “There was a time when I would wake up to the It is the sound of freedom, and of love. family trouble since then, they’ve turned ₹7,500 very sexy a USB port sound of my grandmother’s reedy voice ringNine years ago, Sunayna* was working in Love Commandos for help. ing through the house. Then I’d look at the pic- the credit card division of a bank in Delhi. Just “Facebook se pyaar shuru hota hai, aur phone tures of gods, mutter a quick prayer. Now, I out of college, this was a part-time job where pe prem ki khidki khulti hai (Romance starts wake up to vibrations, the phone always un- she took calls from harried customers and pa- with Facebook. And the window of love opens der my pillow. The first thing I do is check for tiently told them about new schemes and on the phone),” says Sanjoy Sachdev, chairman messages,” she wrote in her essay. Phone in cards. Dev* was one of them. When they dis- of the organisation that helps runaway couhand, the online world on her screen, there al- 9500 covered they shared a language, Bengali, theN70:ples. In the five years of its existence, Love Nokia Nokia ways looms the possibility of many friendofficial communication turned personal, Commandos claims to have dealtNokia with 3110 more Every Communicator: teenager than 40,000 cases. “And almost all Classic: ships and, perhaps, even love. more familiar. He replaced the bank’s helpline of themThis beBusiness class. backbethen gan with the mobile,” he says. It seems handset This handset (or India has 900 million mobile subscribers, number with hers. Slowly, a relationship thathad the wanted 9MB of any othergan to blossom. They spent hours talking 117 million smartphone users, and 213 million toto main protagonist of the “love revolution”, as buy one as internal Communicator mobile internet users, which means 77 out of each other, often through the night. “I shared the Love Commandos call it, is not a person or it had dual storage, model) was often 100 people wield mobiles currently. A sevenspoke religion but the mobile phone. which could seen in a room with my mother and brother. Icameras. country survey released in June reveals that Somestart of (*Some names have been changed.) be expanded TV 74 serialssoftly, and mostly I would just listen to him.The the selfie... up to 2GB per cent Indians sleep with their cellphones, we movies times, the sun would come up before many take their phones into showers, and would hang up,” says Sunayna, who is now priyanka kotamraju

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Touch Wind inscreen her hair, with phonesecrets in her hand

work trips, and a large majority of the relationships were workplace romances. Interestingly, 92 per cent women (as opposed to 81 per cent men) kept their relationships secret and were not caught. And of those who did not manage it, for 77 per cent men and 62 per cent women the discovery didn’t lead to divorce.

All of this is just a statistical way of saying that infidelity is here to stay, no matter how loudly people stammer “b-b-but Indian culture.” Therefore, the freedom that a mobile provides is no longer about meeting the new lover. That’s the easy part. When in doubt, Tinder. The energy of the mobile is now mostly devoted to hiding the affair. Let’s go back to Mehra. In 2012, three years after the first affair ended, Mehra met someone else. Met is technically incorrect, the girl was his junior from college, and they found each other on Facebook.

Soon the occasional pings on messenger became frequent, they met for dinner once, and the sexual chemistry was so high that they went away together the very next weekend.

Mehra is now the president – operations of a multi-national company and he had a top-end smartphone but the machinations of an extramarital relationship, he discovered, are harder, though cheaper, the second time around.

As per company policy, his secretary had access to his business e-mail, and in an earlier emergency he had handed over his Gmail password to her as well. He opened a second account, but found it clunky to switch between three mailing apps. His girlfriend and he exchanged photos of themselves on Snapchat, but once when his wife had access to the phone as she was following the directions on line driving, They plan she for asked Google maps while Life he was hours what snacks to In the him why he had downloaded Snapchat. bring on tourinand how he acshouting match that ensued, which many bottles of water cused her of constantly being suspicious, he to carry insisted that she delete the app then and (representative image) shutterstock there, and so she did.

“The new phones are an absolute nightmare,” he says, “both Android and iOS display My mother doesn’t take pictures with her theEvery weekend andonher rowdy first two lines ofmy themom message screen, so phone or listen to music. She has no time for even friends road. They hire vans and, under if hit thethephone is locked someone can john t takai/shutterstock selfies, nor is she suddenly overcome by the quickly the guise of the visiting they terrorise read text.”temples, Then, there is the trouneed to look up how old Madonna’s daughter ble the countryside. bully the van driver into with all the They photos taken on the phone. is right now. She makes calls with her phone Mehra makinghas unscheduled stops then emotionto remember toand delete them from liked to play theplans. then popular game ‘Snake’ and she makes She comes and goeson as the ally gallery, blackmail himasinto dropping every foldtour as well the recently deleted it, he mostly refused.

If at all heloyal let them, sheand pleases; her team of bafflingly auto- er. member back home or to her doorstep at him the end And any photos videos sent to on he hovered around until had a few WhatsApp drivers at her service.

Shethey picks upplayed her friends of this very also longimmediately day. They planbecome for hours what part of rounds it back.

“Overall and she and givesthen themsnatched missed calls when she is the snacks to bring on tour many bottles gallery.

“While the and newhow smartphones although,” he says,They “thathead phone was safe.

If you low waiting outside. to sales and jewelof water carry. you canto question you tototake theBefore relationship a whole got message, it and only they said 1lie message received leryaexhibitions shamelessly to new themlevel, aboutand theI religious significance of and the will confess the photos and to hit three before it.” videos theiryou’ve families that theykeys are on theiropening way home beach they visited,it they will reelofoffa are ahave greatjust turn-on, is also a bit Eventhey though he was aboutchatthe pain when are truly justexhilarated sitting around names obscure temples and he yousays. willSo, be on sito of keep it scrubbed clean,” freedom to text and chat privately, he was con- the ting about predictably disappointing lenced andoffilled withwho shame you dared advice a friend was that in a similar sitstantly cautious. He tried various options — uation, Mehra sons-in-law. question theirapiety. too became consumer of the saving her number a company’s name, multi-billion dollar My mother and under her friends The other day I found myself high-growth industry — saving it in aup man’s etc — are always to name something. on a that slow-moving, not-very-popapps help you cover up an afbut just committed it Theyeventually clean temples and dream ular After day train, way fair. manywobbling trials andits errors, She makes calls with to off the up memory uniformsand fortook theirit singing from endon oftwo.

Tamil Nadu toa he hasone settled TigerText, her phones and she address book.

The affair rangifts its group. They give combined the other, app and indiscovered that messaging which messagIt was exhilarating, makes plans course 2009,grandchildren’s but Mehra can for eachinother’s my self-destruct compartmentonce was almost exes they are how easy it was to still rattleceremonies the number offthey the naming and clusively filled Stocks, with women. read, and Vaulty an app meet someone and top of let hisanything head. new come inwon’t Throughout the to day, I listened as that allows you store incrimithen build a phonewithhas to That their the littlemobile temple-town these women out phones nating picturespulled and videos and is relationship mostly been an enabler of relationships out visiting it and then promptly cutting it and made calls to check various people had designed toiflook like an app that on the phone and trystsTheir — of phones the intradownsecret to size. are constantly eaten, if theyhelps had boiled the milk,your if they had you manage shares. or extra-marital variety — is on the go. found the food lighting up and they are constantly that had been left in fridge You need a password tothe enter the nothing new. phones What isinalso nothandbags, my and if they were With their their going to godeleted to sleepFacebook on time Vault.

He has surprising is the fact thaton infidelmother’s friends check their tenants, they so that they would not keep people waiting in messenger on the phone and ality in Indiaharvests is a trend firmly as so supervise andasthey areestablished back in time thedisabled station the next morning. backing up anything to the iCloud that of rising smartphone sales.

In aaround survey from for tea.

They are seeing the world I heard women’s voices all around me, talkhis iPad. conducted

by Ashleyplaces Madison, website and ingLife them and travelling nearaand far. They to is the people they the people they better now, he loved, says, although there is mobile app thatsuitcases helps married people find aput have filled their with spices and they up with.

Theirdrawback, voices were tingediswith caveat.

“The only of course, that lovers (slogan: lifefrom is short, have an are calling home the airport inaffair), Dubai 87 to the lovefear and annoyance, sleep andtheregret. of discovery, which is half thrill ofI per cent women per you centeaten? men in ar- an say everything is and fine,81have They thought of all of relationship, us moving forward, steadily, extramarital is considerably ranged marriages confessed having had af- reduced have been photographed in to front of Niagara towards lives we never would now,”that he says, “butthought I would we rather be fairs. this, 81adorable per cent men and 68 per poncent half-thrilled Falls, Of looking in waterproof lead. The wind hair, phones inthan our within myour girlfriend and alive women said theenjoyed affair had positively impacted murdered chos. They have parks in the sunshine, hands, we are all unstoppable. by my wife.” their marriages.

Like in the of Mehra, 40 have resigned themselves tocase wearing sneakers venugopal snigdha manickavel is a Chennai-based writer per these dalliances happened on veena withcent their of saris.

Perfect ally or potential villain — app-armed smartphones As mobile phones have percolated their way into everyday life, my mother’s world has can be both when it comes to extramarital affairs expanded, stretched across oceans and trickled down into the palm of her hand

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hese days when I call home, my mother is often out. She is attending 70th birthday parties, house-warming ceremonies or the weddings of disoriented brides with sleepy NRI grooms. anjay (name changed) metand his My father willMehra answer the phone instead firstto post-marriage at asister. comhe will talk me thinking girlfriend that I am my pany off-site in Goa. The was 2003.

He will tell me in great detail hisyear ongoing batin the Hyderabad office tles withShe theworked newspaper delivery man and the and in Delhi andfound the only thing they had in odd he things he has in the garden.

“Your common until then group e-mails mother has gone out,was I don’t know whenfrom she the department.

In Goa, thewith evenings, afwillHR return,” my father willinsay, no real ter the day’s hung around in anxiety in hisconference, voice. This they is because, wherever the pool. her, but didn’t she infinity has gone, my Mehra motherliked is just a phone call think much of it. Hephone had been then away. Her brick-like safelymarried tucked away for nearly years, hadcase, two small and within anseven embroidered withinkids a bag, pretty managed ‘keep himself busy’ withinmuch a plastic bag andtothus there is nothing with work and home. to worry about.

She will be home soon.

But after decade Goa, he or wasso, on as a business Overa week the past mobile trip in Mumbai, and in their the hotel late in the phones have percolated way into smallevening, do other watch town life,with my nothing mother’stoworld hasthan expanded, TV and order room service, founddown himself stretched across oceans and he trickled insending textofmessages to the palm her hand.to the girl. “Within a week,” he says,life “we were years exchanging My mother’s started ago in a 50-60 small messages a day. It was easy it village, barefoot andexhilarating, unable to how remember was meet someone and then build a relawhentoshe first wore shoes.

She thought that tionship onfor thewashing phone.” your Just the SMS Sunlight mostly soap was clothes, component ofand histhen mobile be then your hair your bill bodyused — onetoafter around ₹4000. the other.

I think of how her world grew bighad a and Nokia handset, the aone with gerMehra and bigger then how, after point, it blue light.

“At home, would put it started to shrink.

SheI was boxed inon bysilent marmode, butchildren that phone hadthose a pretty bright riage and and all things that screen, the whole would glow blue she had been taught room to be afraid of. Unknowns when a message one point, wife and ‘what-ifs’; thearrived. places At women couldmy not go asked whythey my phone wasdo. constantly buzzto, theme things could not ingBut at night, and she I told it was now, here is,her with this work. phoneI’d inwait her for her to at turn the other side, hide and the hand (set an alarmingly loudthen volume) screen under the for blanket and reply thea she’s not waiting anyone else.

She to is at messages.” himself getting intime in her Mehra life thatfound is truly her own.

She has creasingly possessive of his phone. His kids kicked all the boxes aside.

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READER’S DIE JEST

Six for one

Return key A field staff of microfinance company Ujjivan Financial Services records loan repayment details on his smartphone. The palmtops have stepped up the firm’s loan disbursement rate — from 80,000 a month a few years ago to three lakh currently

Hiding from the police, the beautiful, tormented actress Kay Gonda undoes the six fans who write to her, while Ayan Rand slowly loses the plot

arunava sinha

Strong signals for trade

“W

ho is Kay Gonda?”

“If you have to ask, you have lost the right to know the answer.” Without saying it in as many words, enigmatic heroine Kay-not-Greta Gonda looked at Dagny Taggart with tired eyes. “You, who have not yet been written, but will be one day when Atlas shrugs, do not be jealous of me because I came before she did say to the one person n you,” Chanderi, thenot Madhya Pradesh town she did not meet night of January that gives itsthat name to the region’s16. exquiOr,site maybe it was a different date. But it hapfabric, Muzaffar Ansari’s family of pened one night. weavers is busy working on an order for Onsaris thatfrom nightJaipur.

GondaBarely rode her yet-to-be-insilk a while ago, he vented — of forsamples the mantowho liveddealer only had sentHonda images the sari for himself and on therefore did the greatest using WhatsApp his smartphone.

The degood for the world was still a figment of the signs were approved instantly and the family imagination — to the of the handful of of six set to work on homes the saris, which will be people hadAnsari picked outhis of son the ready inwhose three letters weeks.she While and love of two millions. worknotes on the looms in their house, others knew she bring every worthy in She the family assistcould in warping, braiding and man withmany the divinity of selfishotherface-to-face processes. Like weaver families in ness that laythe within his today soul simply by looking the region, Ansaris earn about ₹800 deeply their increase eyes from the the silver screen. a day —into a sharp from ₹50 they Each of them clunguntil to their packet of ago. popcorn, scraped together seven years This refusing share itwas withbrought the woman they had change intofortune about mainly come to the theatre with. through mobile phones.

Women.

Wives or mistresses, mothers-inMiles away in Bengaluru, Murugan can’t law nuns, at comrades creatures, stopor smiling his luck. or Theadoring owner of a single all them existed only asoperates mean-spirited, nartaxiofuntil last year, he now a fleet of 10 row-minded, harridans intent onexpansion: sucking thea in the IT city. His ally in this rapid spirit out of the men companions they smartphone with thewhose Uber Partner app on it. were. could theyMurugan not be likemanages Kay Gonda, SeatedHow in his office, his who wasand able to convey virtuesmovement of selfishdrivers tracks their the real-time ness her eyes alone? usingwith his smartphone.

They cannot dupe him That,the of number course, isofwhen notorkilling about trips she theywas make their the man “I who to marry her.mobile Why? location. owewanted my success to the How? And long did take income: her to renew phone,” hehow declares.

His itdaily over her make-up afterwards?

While the did ₹25,000, including his incentives forPress clocking not have12the answer to that most important at least trips for each vehicle every day. of

questions, Gonda was missing. came Howard Roark. DvE seemed to be her Except she was not. man for a while, for he had squandered the For Gonda went into the house of the hap- last of his wealth that night in a tribute to the less husband George S Perkins, who wished to absurdity of the human existence — or was shelter her from the police, as she wanted, but that Camus? — and now he wanted the two of was seduced instead by the lure of green cur- them to escape to Brazil on a ship. “Kay,” said tains into asking her to leave. Then there was Kay, but when she realised that the “zil” of Brathe Communist Chuck Fink or his father-in- zil was not on his mind, she ran away. law Jeremiah Sliney — depending on whether Only, of course, to arrive at Johnnie Dawes’s it’sAffordably the play orpriced the novel that₹4,000 you’re reading — garret. from onwards Where Johnnie,them. slimNow, and from blonde, middlemen to procure the who were ready to turn her infeatures, for lucre, but proud and packing an array of useful smartnoble, withthe degrees in internetand we find outpossibly on our own most reanot before like cheap, phones arespeaking increasingly drivingsecond-hand small busi- physics philosophy, showed up some time sonableand price for a commodity,” he says.

Marxist nesses textbook. and entrepreneurs, boosting their later her,travels “I’ve seen everyEven better, heand no told longer to Jaipur, What as ofwell the as artist Dwight Lan-fishermen in Kolkata or Benares income visibility.

From thing I want, that’s you,” for or approaches a sent middlegley, you ask?and Langley, coastal Kerala Tamilwho Nadujust to the microfi- man to get his thesari police, and shot himself designs approved.

“I dead send threw themaking girl whothe loved him,of villages in my pictures after nance out official rounds confessing the crime Gonover mobile andto modifications, if While the Press did the girl whose money he hadall been interior Andhra Pradesh, of them are any, are also da had committed. discussed with clients over not have the living on —gratefully symbolising the moral clutching at their smartphones.

This convenient suicide meant phone. This has saved us time and improved answer to that bankruptcy of a rotten world bethe remaining he 3,200 pages of the productivity,” adds. most important of lieved in capitalism nor in Mobileneither slays middleman novel — 2,575this of which would have Sharing veteran weaver’s questions, Gonda genius architects orange Osama Manzar, the with founder of been Dawes’s reupbeat outlookmonologue is Ismaeel, a— sari was missing. hair.

Each of Langley’s Foundapaintings Digital Empowerment mained designerunwritten. in his 20s, But who Dawes works Except she was not was Gonda, sometimes tionof (DEF), points out thatdressed, in traout to be a negotiates fool, because on a computer and diI send pictures of my turned often not, but he was unable ditional skill-based clusters liketo Kay hadn’t anyone all, rectly overkilled phone with after buyers. designs over recognise the genuine article Chanderi, Benares and Murshishe on the run has fromgone the “Mywasn’t monthly income WhatsApp and when his apart- modifications, if any, police dabad she (all walked famousinto silk-weaving after all, and Ayn ₹10,000,” Rand had up from ₹1,500 to over ment.

Served the idiot right for drinking centres), mobiles and smartlostwith the plot, he after all. says. are gin. discussed And what Kay get from the priestclients Claudeover phone phones havedid proliferated rapidThe only good Rand did with Hething has athat Facebook page forIdehis Ignatius Hixhas when she sought ly. “And that impacted accesssanctuary for al was to not publish as aupdates novel. The play was designs it and it regularly the night in his church?Weavers They could both have bad enough.using to market information.

But some meddling busybody his mobile phone.

“It is been defrocked that albeit in different had to comeeasy now know where annight, exhibition along and undo that, andprodnow to click pictures of my ways (nudge nudge, wink), is taking place, what wink buyers are but Brother you have to read twice in two forms.

Exuctsiton myover, smartphone and upHix chosefor instead to advise her to confessrates her cept looking and the prevailing market Because if you have toisread it, load you themdon’t. on my page. The feedback quick, crime at the competing church run by a wom- you for their products.” don’t have to readon it — whatever the hell as buyers comment them immediately, anAnsari’s down the road, inbeen frontinofthe anweaving audience of that family has promeans. helping us improve the designs,” he says. thousands.

But Kay would have nun of it. with fession for seven centuries; today, armed (This monthly helps you talk about a Earlier, he soldcolumn through middlemen and reOff she went,they then, have to the eliminated ex-billionairethree Die- book smartphones, without having to read mained clueless about theit.) final selling price. trich Esterhazy (DvE)’s hotel suite that Not anymore. “I am not being exploited by kindsvon of middlemen.

“To begin with, wefor didn’t sinha classic, contemporary elusive night’s of course, she arunava know about theshelter. price orActually, availability of raw mamiddlemen astranslates my forefathers were. I sell fiction, English t@arunava was in search for and Howard he the be- Bengali terials — cotton silk Roark — andbefore needed through mynon-fiction Facebookinto page as well as through

Affordably priced and packed with an array of useful features, smartphones are increasingly driving small businesses and entrepreneurs towards steady profits and visibility

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Ideal The novel and the Play Ayn Rand Penguin ₹399

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EXTRACT

In the flesh

Deepak Ayare, Chief information officer, Ujjivan Financial Services

work. From 400 a month, an agent today easily services 1,000 customers. “A customer’s data shows up the moment her ID is keyed into the system. Only the latest entry needs to be made, saving time, which is instead used to inform the customer about newer products or catering to more clients,” he adds.

Ujjivan is also using smartphones to educate agents. Rather than conducting hourlong training programmes in the office, which will lead to wasting an entire workday, Ujjivan prepares audio-video training modules and sends them to the agents’ smartphones.I “They can you watch Section II, chapter six complex. You are perhaps aware that your seriously, will join in them beingwhenever disrobed.they I free,” he says. presence on the Island has a specific cause. willare begin.’ […] Vane spoke slowly and precisely. She Whatever you might call it, allow me for the The microfinance companyher foots the bill for Saying which, she slipped shapeless scanned the young faces before her. ‘Some of moment to refer to it as a Trauma. A Wound- robe airtime charges. for the smartfromand herinternet shoulders.

One As moment she you know what to expect at this morning’s Rit- ing. An Assault. Some of you — most of you, I wasphone itself, agents “a soft clothed andthe in the nextare thegiven garment layadual. You’ve been to the Welcome Field before.’ vance ofaround ₹8,000her to buy we recover it in should say — have known enormous damage. crumpled feet,them; a garland of pink The six young women stared back, their eight instalments”, Ayare says.

‘Even though most of you no longer know faded cotton.

There she stood, a great mounfaces impassive, eyes narrowed against the exactly what the cause of the damage was, you tain of naked, sagging flesh, puckered and glare. The sky arching over their heads was al- can see the effects upon your bodies. In your dimpled Message from rain gauge with a life-time’s worth of experiencready blinding blue, even though the sun had lives before you came here, these once-perfect es. Further in God’s John From thesouth, shoulders downOwn to herCountry, calves, she only been up a couple of hours. There were no bodies were turned into prisons for your spir- wasThekkayyam set sago, up Radio Monsoon the colour ofhas boiled with moles and to clouds in sight and the air was thick with salty it. Whatever you yearned to achieve in your blemishes share weather and climate information with scattered across her body like heat. the fishing community.

Theaservice uses exsatellives, you could not, on account of social atti- paint-spatters.

Her belly was billowing ‘For the benefit of those who are here for the tudes regarding the container in which your panse, lite data tofrom predict fivepowerful days ahead, slung theweather broad and su-infirst time,’ said Vane, ‘I will take a few minutes spirit resided: your bodies. Some of you have perstructure cluding parameters like wave height,Her wind of her bones beneath. to describe what we are about to do and to scars, some of you have missing limbs. But all breasts speedwere and direction, which are crucial for fishsmall, with huge flat nipples give a brief explanation as to why.’ ermen. Users dialupa like toll-free from of you, along with the physical raised a pair number of pale misIndicating the patch of bare stone in the traces of wounds, have invisible their mobiles and listen tostaring the forecast in their matched eyes out from grass beside her, she said, ‘Each of you will wounds, too. local language or access through Twitter her chest, whileither navel was a come up to this stone slab here, face around and Facebook.

‘Here on the Islands, we folpunched-in nose. The grizzled and… remove your clothes.’ She paused. ‘If low a policy regarding invisible As if an invisible giant’s A handfultriangle of fishermen alsohair using their of herare pubic danyou can remove your jewellery and piercings wounds. We have a process mobiles fish prices infrom various coastgledout incongruously under hand had ruffled a to find as well we would appreciate it, but we won’t called ‘Memrase’ by which we al markets.the Before even like returning to shore, vast belly, a grey goatee collection of life-sized insist.’ they are able to finalise the best deal for their can heal them.’ Vane paused, as beard. clothes pegs standing day’s catch. There is invisible another giant’s kind ofhand catch, if carefully considering her As if an stiff and wooden in the […] though. Joseph Xavier aKalapurakal, next words. ‘Some of you know had ruffled collection ofgeneral lifegrass, all six young Three [girls] stared back, expressionless: the what it is and some of you resecretary the All Kerala Fishing Boatstiff Operclothes pegs standing women flinched and ofsized twist Muzaffar Ansari’s family, which in theour weaving profession seven oneModern with the bright halo of orange hair, has thebeensent ators Association, pointsinout atall sea methods.

It isforno sur-centuries in murmured and wooden thethat grass, sixthe (Madhya Pradesh), has eliminated kinds prise: of middlemen, smartphones; oneChanderi with the prosthetic arm and the onethree with mobile range is limited to 15km from shore. therethanks are tolosses and (top and inset) young women flinched and So microfinance from Ujjivan themobile-powered misshapen head, all her services hair bunched to damage that result from our its use is restricted as of Those now, hewho says.had atmurmured. one side. The burkha-clad girl, whose face was process too.

Nevertheless, from sea to land, theavertmobile tended a Welcome before barely to this disburse Chanderiyaan (a her website supported

by DEF). ‘It uncovered, opened mouth wide in alarm, groundbreaking advances. is onmanaged account of sec- 80,000 loans a phone signals ed their eyes out of politeness.

The money comes toOf my account automaticalmonth, slowed down by the intensive paper- ButFarmers arching her eyebrows. the two with shaven ondary mobileunmarked alerts for head rainfall loss, the losses connected to the Memthe girldepend with theon smooth work required. we need can comfortably ly and evenswirling have to tattoos visit thethat bank to de- rase heads, theI don’t one with reacand temperature plan process, that I“Today say: you to accept clapped her hands toforecasts her eyes and let outtheir a posit cash,” he says. manage three loans a weakness fluting squawk.farming hed down to her cheeks, narrowed her eyes your activities accordingly. body with all itslakh wounds, scars, She sank to her knees, bent A month,” says Ayare. and flexed the corners of her mouth: unim- and serviceemitting promotedshort

by IFFCO Kisan infirmities.

You need to own your bodies over double, while sharp A field staffheal collecting repayCash registers are beeping pressed.

The remaining girl jerked now as if a before allows you can completely.

It is the first chirps. The girlSanchar with theLtd orange hairfarmers turned to For Murugan, banking are aeyes thing step ments from clients makes the whatev- away, curling her string had been too, pulled in herchores neck. Her diallipa up number get their of agriyou will take towards recovering at thetonakedness I don’t have to step of thewide, past. as “I don’t have and to step of my of- er was entries a smartphone, opened if in panic herout eyebrows culture-related problems adloston to you in the courseand of the experi- the other’s distress. out of my office to fice to receive money from Uber. The company ences thethat system reflects this instantly. arched high. brought you here.

Vane smiled. dressed by an expert. On the receive money from That,With in turn, Ujjivan makes weekly transfers to my Even ‘So. Vane continued as if she had not account. noticed the taxi drivers profiting thishelps reason heldcalcufirmly in your ‘You have allroad, just witnessed theare power of Uber... it makes late the cash it needs disburmy vehicle instalments are deducted reactions.

‘There are two reasons we believeautoin minds, theirsome association with each of you will for come forward, stand nudity,’ she said.from ‘It affects of us more ob-cab weekly transfers to matically bank.

I getweSMS alerts on the next day. your “Cash nudity here. by Thethe first is that consider ourmy onsal aggregators.

At end the we micro-level, this platform and bare bodies to the viously than others.

But in the are all my account mobile forinstruments all the transactions,” adds. By group management has family. improved, bodies to be of social he change. small in Asia’s biggest that is now your altered by it. Just as businesses we are influenced, and Yet another theatre forand this sunlight, mobile revoluwe know how much opening our bodies to air we slum, Dharavi, are using their ‘Iand cansince see, looking into your faces, that for sometimes diminished, by the layers of clothis carrying, tion our is the microfinance sector, where cleanse spirit.

The sun’s light returns us tothe twomoney mobiles to behind, send products of youan in agent particular the verywe idea of being ing we customarily hide we aretoal-onsometimes another staff greatly disburthepalmtops conditionhave in which weimproved enter thisloan world.

It naked marketplaces like Snapdeal. in publicsend is humiliating.

Degrading. Yet tered by the actline of baring our bodies.

Come sal, repayment collections and customer man- youmember todo collect cash from of him before the now. brings every member of a group within the As Let Manzar puts it, “Mobile is not a producer, will each this as a mark belonging us begin.’ end of thetoday,” Ayare. agement.

Deepak Ayare,thechief circle of sameness.

Flattens curveinformation of deceit. and but it gives access to information.” And inforrespect eachsays of your companions. In orofficer at vanity.

Ujjivan Financial Services, says his der toWhen there no connectivity village, manjula padmanabhan is a writer, Discourages mation, as everyone knows, is artist power indeed. inspire andisencourage you andintoashow agent entries onour theown smartphone firm’sI come loan disbursement rate has increased ‘Now to the second reason.

It is more youthe that we atmakes the Islands take beliefs and playwright dramatically. Until a few years ago, Ujjivan and transmits them on entering a mobile net- rashmi pratap

In a world gone mad the Island is a refuge dedicated to healing women torn apart by violence. But can it help a girl who isn’t damaged?

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The Island of Lost Girls Manjula Padmanabhan Hachette Fiction ₹550

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Bites of heritage A new cookbook takes you into the kitchens of seven communities in Tamil Nadu

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Annapurni: Heritage Cuisine from Tamil Nadu Sabita Radhakrishna Roli ₹995

ot so long ago, the average Indian’s knowledge of South Indian cuisine was limited to idlis and dosas, with the entire south of India in a blur of coconuts and pepper and rice. Likewise, not much was known about North Indian cuisine — as indistinguishable to the average South Indian — except for tandoori chicken and chhole bhature. Today’s gourmet takes pride in being able to identify the variations of Chettiar and Tamil Brahmin cuisine and may even be ready to explore the cuisines of the lesser-known communities in each state.

Sabita Radhakrishna’s new cookbook, Annapurni, explores the cuisines of a few of Tamil Nadu’s communities, from her own Mudaliar community to the previously undocumented recipes of Tamil Muslims and Naidus and Kongunadus. The book’s attractive design makes it look like an old scrapbook, peppered with illustrations and vintage photographs of the AGENDA various communities featured in it. The author has focused on seven communities: Vellalar Christians and Mudaliars, Anglo-Indians, Tamil Muslims, Nattukottai Chettiars and the Naidus and Kongunadus. Tamil Nadu has a staggering number of classes and communities, among them the Naidus and Kongunadus who have migrated from the neighbouring state of Andhra Pradesh. After an introduction to the culture and culinary traditions of Tamil Nadu, Radhakrishna prebeen a TV journalist for a decade. sents have each community with a summary of its Buttraditions a fortnight ago, I produced my first history, and festivals.

The preparainterview (with Member Parliament tion and consumption of foodofand the celeJay of Panda) thatiswas filmed streamed bration a meal a form of and expression in live by a mobile phone. In television terms, the smartphone doubled up as the camera and the OB van. In effect, the cost of producing a live interview such as this had been reduced to about 0.0001 per cent — or some such ridiculous fraction — of a conventional production.

So had the size of the equipment we needed to carry, not to mention the absence of government licences or prohibitive transmission fees which TV channels must pay.

What’s more, viewers could not only watch the interview live on their mobile phones, they could also ask questions and interact with the guest. While there has been much noise — globally and in India — about how the digital shift is killing print publications, few realise that digital video may be the TV-killer.

Reed Hastings, CEO of the wildly popular movie-streaming site Netflix, believes that broadcast TV in the US will die by 2030, with online and mobile videos taking over. Hastings told The Hollywood Reporter, “It’s kind of like the horse, you know, the horse was good until we had the car.” This tectonic shift has already begun in India too: two of my friends from journalism school, both with a decade of TV experience, have quit to join start-up mobile apps.

The current global market leaders in this disruptive mobile video streaming technology are Periscope and Meerkat, both available on Android and iOS. In March this year Twitter bought Periscope for close to $100 million, according to The Wall Street Journal. That is a pretty mind-boggling price for a platform that was still at a beta stage then. But if you look at the incredible growth in this space, the price appears justified.

YouTube killed the TV star Mobile video data consumption is growing at a whopping 88 per cent annually and traffic is expected to grow 24 times in the next five years pv sivakumar

Revolution in your hands Flavours capital Naidu fish fry, one of the recipes from Annapurni avabhaykumar

How mobile video streaming will become the TV-killer

sambuddha mitra mustafi

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every culture and this is evident in this ac- dient that sets it apart from the others. Even count of the food traditions of each communi- the ubiquitous rasam and sambar have variaty. According If the Chettiars areglobal well mobile known data for their to Cisco, traf- in tions eachstages community: themedia Anglos have the in initial — as digital compalegendary and the An-a nies fic grew 69hospitality per cent in 2014, withfun-loving almost half turned rasam or mulligatawny into arethe stillspicy not well funded enough to do rig-a glo-Indians for theiradded joie de vivre, she says orous, billion new devices in the year, taking rich soup with areportage. chicken broth, makoriginal But ifthereby you look at these traits are evident in their culinary tradi- the the total number of devices and connections ing itUS, their for own. example, Huffington Post picked tions to 7.4 too. billion. And of the mobile data traffic, 55 upThe Brahmins areprize conspicuous by their abits first Pulitzer in 2012 for national what food of reporting, perSocent wasdistinguishes mobile video the traffic.

To of puteach this in sence fromwhile this extensively digital-first researched outlets likecookVice, these communities?

Shemobile tells us:video The Nattuperspective, last year’s traffic Politico book of and TamilVox Nadu cuisine, areheritage producing somethough of the kottai Chettiars, whothe celebrate theentire use ofglobspic- most was nearly 20 times size of the the author does say that it was not possible to innovative storytelling formats. es internet with exuberance, al in 2000. have a wide range of meat include many communities.

On the consumption side,The theChettiar mobile sechas dishes cooked in rich gravies and In India, mobile video growth is even faster, given the viewer tion, incredible disappointingly, hasboth onlyina choice, ‘tiffin’ specials like smartphones paniyaram andand ever im- terms of variety spurred by cheap few of recipes from their content and thevast timeand at adai. Thedata Naidus are noticeably proving connectivity.

Mobile video data which they want varied to cuisine. consume it. Features like health-conscious and particular consumption is growing at a whopping 88 per custom notifications Radhakrishna’s cookbook is and on-demand videos aboutannually using oldand grains likeismillets cent traffic expected Tamil to grow full of folklore and is legends, marmean that the news consumer engaged in Muslims have andtimes jowarin inthe their diet.

Theyears.

Kongu24 next five And there is aof distinctive ritualsthat andshe theisfiner points real-time withriage the issues passionate a range nadu community has interesting generation growing up out of cooking, also the about.

She noaslonger has correct to wait biryanis like variations in favourite its cuisine‘TV and uses there whose chanmethod of serving in a traditional the newspaper the mornthikkadi, made with for dried copra, gingelly and nel’ is YouTube on their seeds mobiles. ela sapaad.

For the meal ing, and doesn’t have to served sit in rice dumplings theBut sour gongura. thegreens crucialcalled question is, on a banana is arranged diffront of TV atleaf 9pm to catch the But the crucial The mysteriously Country will journalism named actually imferently inof each South headlines the day.

NorIndian does question is, will Captain Chicken from and the Tamil prove with this digital mostate andtothere is anon exact order she have depend an editor journalism actually Anglos has Iabelieve dash of it chilli powder bile shift? already is incurate whichthe food must had. She to news shebe wants: she improve with this and ginger and garlic to pep up improving, will continue to an otherwise even remindsisyou you are done eatherthat ownwhen editor. digital and mobile bland do so, dish. though many of my coling, you must bring upper halfand of the leaf Most the journalists newsshift? I believe it The meat-loving — the author’s down to cover leagues lament the Mudaliars fall of origithe lower indicate that rooms will half pushto back against already is improving own community have some unusual recipes you will visit this nal, shoe-leather— reporting to again. brave new world, of course, like chuppal, aand marinated skewered aggregation click-bait head- lamb prepAnnapurni and is an unabashedly lament the loss non-vegetarof their own arationThe inspired their lines. reasonbyfor myPersian opti- friends, and ian compilation of the recipesin of society the seven exalted position as feathe the kheema vadai, which is the mism is two-fold, both on the South Indian tured communities, with curators of the some mediavegetarian narrative. version of the made with grated coco- Just production andkebab consumption sides. specials round up the collection.

Thereback is a like to brick-and-mortar retail pushes nut and gram. The Tamil Muslims have a against On thegreen production side, digital technology chapter e-commerce with recipes or forblack-and-yellow the vadagams, rasam cabs range up of the distinctive thikkadi,a lobby opens doors forbiryanis anyone like to become and curry powders of But eachifcommunity, which against Uber. a technology is made withorrice simmered publisher livedumplings video streamer.

This in willa cheaper can be prepared ahead.

An entire is and more democratic forchapter both the lightlydown spiced mutton gravy, associated and the Sriwith Lank-a producer break the brahminism devoted toand thethe intricacies of then preparing that consumer, that techan-inspired biryani. few editors idiappam at elite newspapers and TV chan- nology perfect cup South Indian filter coffee, fitwill of eventually triumph.

That isathe Though many traditions like the story nels who were ableculinary to control the media narrating finale to this well-documented and charof human progress. preparation of curry powders and—the poundtive.

Journalism — or storytelling is not, and mingly designed book.

Revolution is no longer in the controlled ing of rice stone mortars areis common should notinbelarge rocket science.

There a story- airwaves Recipesor I tested and recommend: fish newsprint.

RevolutionNaidu has reacto all in ofeach South are subtle varia- hed teller oneIndia, of us, there and digital technology, fry, Mudaliar chops kari varuval, eggs in tamaeveryone’s hands. tions in the of each community. coupled withrecipes the reach of social media, isThe fi- rind sauce and Kongunadu chicken fry. rangedemocratising of curry powders and chutneys, and a sambuddha mitra mustafi is the founder of nally the space. lathika george thesome_buddha author of The Suriani Kitchen Political Indianist spice called have that one ingre- The Yes,mix there will vadagam also be riff-raff — particularly

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A movement on a missed call Burmese tea leaf salad

1/2 cup green tea leaves 2 lemons 6-8 garlic cloves 1 green chilli 3 green onions 1 tsp ginger 1 tbsp sesame oil 3 tbsp peanut oil use the chopped cellphone judiciously.

Messages are 6 cups lettuce or cabbage sent individually Cherry tomatoes to national-level convenors Fried moong who pass it todal state-level managers, who then Roasted peanuts disseminate it further.

Sesame Where seeds the cellphone has made definite inFish roads sauce is in heightening the drama around acSalt

The cellphone has seeped into social activism, but its impact is not limitless

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holanath Biswal, 68, retired bank come aid, social activists don’t want to overesmanager, is not sure how he first timate its potential. There is no substitute to heard of the India against Corrup- face-to-face interaction, they say. tion (IAC) campaign: “The television Aruna Roy’s Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathor the radio.” But he lucidly remembers what an (MKSS) has been working in the rural borhe did soon after. “I gave a missed call on the oughs of Rajasthan for nearly 30 years. The toll-free number and became part of the impact of the cellphone on activism is, at best, tivism. “The aspect of creating a spectacle has Pickling the tea leaves movement.” Protests and demonstrations had mixed, she says. “It is not a total blessing. It always been there and the cellphone has am1 Steep in Kumar. moderately hot ifwater formem10 never featured in his life before. But fighting has, in fact, given rise to a number of prob- plified it,”tea says Earlier, NAPM minutes.

Drain andinrinse.

Thenapart soak from in cold corruption seemed worthwhile. “And I lems.” When issues are broken down to “brief bers burned a bill Manesar, the water for an hour and drain and rinse. couldn’t do it single-handedly,” he says from messages, quick replies and missed calls”, we 50Squeeze who did it and the local newspapers that out excess liquid. his village, Jagatsinghpur in Odisha. are “reducing ourselves to the lowest com- covered it, others would remain 2 In a small food processor, add tea clueless. leaves, Biswal became a regular at “Even the next district juice of one lemon, three cloves of wouldn’t garlic, demonstrations and rallies orgaknow. with chopped chilli andBut ginger, andWhatsApp, salt. Add you nised by the IAC in the state. “I your comrades and resesame oil spread and oneit to tbsp peanut oil. Pulse till you get ach a rough paste. would get messages about upa wider section when it is put 3 Store foron two coming events. I took part in four thedays. website.” Roy picks out the or five demonstrations, includongoing Shiksha ka Sawaal AbhiSalad ing the one in front of Jagatsinghyan in where 1 Chop lettuce or Rajasthan cabbage and placeeffort in an is pur collectorate and also those in file RTIs even layer on on atolarge plate.from Add a85,000 scoop govof Bhubaneswar,” he says. Once IAC schools. the mofermented ernment leaves to the middleHere of the plate. splintered, and a part went politibile phone became a perfect 2 Fry the garlic in 2 tbsp on for cal, Biswal switched off. But as enabler.

“Thepeanut shortoil film STREET, EAT, REPEAT medium heat. long as it lasted, the cellphone or‘Shiksha ka Sawaal’ was shot and 3 Then place smallon heaps of all the and has chestrated his participation in edited the cellphone remaining ingredients on top of through the the country-wide campaign. spread everywhere it,” lettuce.

With mobile phones dictating she says.

4 Add plenty of crunchy bits. Squeeze daily lives, it is unlikely that soAt salad a recent meeting of the lemon over the and toss. cial activism will remain imperviyoung Working People’s Charter ous to it. WhatsApp and bulk Process in the Capital, a WhatSMSes are coming handy when sApp group was among the dework means engaging large, unmands. The group has street organised sections of people vendors, bricklayers and domest’sthe been one of those weeks. One that be- tea scoops. Similarly, being invited to a Tibe- tioned in Chinese across country. tic workers, as well as trade medical texts as a drink that with a crashed computer In gan campaigns like IAC, which and gained tan household for a cup of salty butter tea “makes one unions, academicians and lawthink better”.

Portuguese traders withand homework burstmomentum onto the scene sorely battles, gal- made from yak milk can be a stressful affair — acquired their yers.

“We network on the taste fornow tea from the Chinese loping influenza, and grassa new violin that unless you are really up on Tibetan etiquette in the 16th century. missed carefully nurtured phone with NGOs,” says Andregional it was Catherine of refused to be tuned.

Then came roots support, the cellphone wasthe frantic re- and know that the right response to an invita- Braganza, the Nirmal Gorana.

The cellphone has princess whose dowry included quest kimonos forIta 40-second scene tion is to dip your hand in a bowl of wine and the small fishing crucialfortonine base-building. was been village crucialofto their who work,took he Bombay, in the school Not to mention majboori, saysplay.

Dilip Pandey, con- an epidem- flick some away. Equally, the British are fa- the tea-drinking says.habit It broke ground in rescuing to England. ic of frayed nasty moods. venor, Aamtempers Aadmi and Party Delhi, mous for their finicky ways with tea. bonded labourers & Not that you or I would ever from drinkJammu that parIn short, kindpart of week who was the earlier of that IAC. would drive So much so that serious writers actually ticular brew.Kashmir andwas other he For the tea taxedplaces, in liquid most people to drink. a value “Communication was Or our mis- pack of Lin- take time off from important novels to write form, so the adds. of the entire“Most day’s tea waslabourers brewed inhad the dor Or, at way the very least, a big mug essays on the subject. In ‘A Nice Cup of Tea’, Ge- morning, inspected sionchocolates. and the best to cut cellphones. cannot by a They visiting officer read and of hot, sweet, steaming across society was tea. the cellorge Orwell has listed “eleven rules, every one then reheated messages, butday. weResulting could in calla through the Whichsays explains why,The although 9am, TheofIACwhich phone,” Pandey. move-it’s just I regard as These specify them.” so bitter and strong that it’s a mirOn target team strategically sentgolden”. emotionally-charged SMSes toconcoction their I’m already on my first was aiming ment may not havethird had cuppa. history,The supporters thattothe tea must be anger Indian, themovement teapot made The cellphone beit.great for continued tomay drink vv krishnan acle that people channelise public to the sugary, milkydid, chai should but the cause hethat asserts vehe- ideally have of china, the water should be basic information Meanwhile, feddissemination. up of the Chibeen gulped down from an earthen kullad.

The mon mently.

“It was a natural manifestation of peodenominator,” she says. boiling at the moment of imSusan Visvanathan, professor on of tea, sociology at nese monopoly the Britnext a light fromto Shillong that pact, ple’s was anger.”

Thegreen teamtea chose channelise Roy’s activism built onbecommunity inter- Jawaharlal Nehru and the cupis should cyUniversity, “access to ish tried to growcalls it initIndia — not should have been sipped from a SMSes. delicate, pat- actions public anger through powerful Draftand first-hand understanding of local unlimited quantum lindrical.

And if you adhere to realising of thatinformation.”

Indians wereBut alEvery office has its terned porcelain cup. The last was freebie issues. ing them was serious strategy and ainvolved To her, the mobile phone these rules when you make yourcan never take mere information doesn’t into readyoften familiar withtranslate the magical own addictive brew teabag of Moroccan Mint should not the entire core team.

“I that remember the have first the oftea, “sitting down talking.” “It re- numbers on the niceplace cup of you will feeland “wisground. places, say the leaf.

Certain“In tribes cooked it asin-a that, even if it tastes been consumed message we sent.atItall. said something like “Aapke duces a discourse to black and white, and the teriors of Narmada, er, braver and more optimistic people would have got vegetable.

Also, legend has an it of boiled rags, is the as I conduct veryhai” own liyeNevertheless, ek 70 saal ka insaan bhookhamy ja raha (A understanding it provides of an issue is super- SMS on a dharna. after drinking it”. it never the imthatBut 2,000 yearsmatches ago, a Buddhist essential fuel on which monsoon Teahungry Party, I for feelyou). cheered.

70-year-oldMadhatter’s man is going Our ficial, without All ofoften which sounds looking like muchat pact our karyakarta monkofdecided to spend sitting seven the enterprise runs And even banging outathis article onemotional an 11-year- consequences.” messages always had heightened Nikhil Dey,But alsobe of ado over a simple cuppa. with themyears and in raising awaresleepless meditation. old replacement computer manageapitch.

The message and the seems messenger mat- MKSS, knows is ‘foolish’ to igfair. Here too,it every chowkidar ness on anduring issue. the If 10 people Sometime fifth year ble with chipped, clunky my side. nore tered, somy these were sent in mug AnnaatHazareji’s but is sure their has the his mobile, favourite peripatetic turn up after field work, he became drowsy and sofour he If 10 people turn up But then, Johnson, I guess I am name andlike thatSamuel brought credibility,” says Pan-a social activism cannotcareening be based chaiwala, who comes hardcore ones may come aftera chewed some leaves from after field work, four “hardened and shameless dey. At the movement’s peak,tea-drinker, the messageswho are on his it. So, while cycle with communication flasks and plastic cups. Just as nearby bush and an SMS,” says Kumar. points felt revived.

WhichDey is how the hardcore ones may has, for twenty years, diluted meals with only with supposed to have reached over a crore people full-timers—isa fashionable largely everyMKSS tea connoisseur state of wild tea plantout access to cellphone wasthat discovered inthe India. come after an SMS the this fascinating whose through in 15infusion days to of a month.

“The SMS plant; was cheaper and photographs, being at SMSes the moment — can discuss the reladoes not mean Chinese facility Initially, theoften British tried to plant kettle scarcely to cool; who with tea then —has three paisetime per SMS,” says Pandey.

In and videos of and shortLapsang films areSouchang, altive merits smoky green tea in India but with Not everyone the it. experiment failed. with Thingsa amuses theofevening, tea solaces the in midHandbook Researchwith on Political Activism In- so shared WhatsApp, tradiSencha andon Kashmiri Kahwa.

And every office went much better phone can read SMS or record when theyan switched to the night, and,Age, withwriters tea, welcomes theGowda morning”. formation MV Rajeev and tional principles has its own addictivestill brewrule that, even if it indigenous Assam a voice message, heIndians says. startvariety.

Then After all, when itmention comes tothe theIAC’s remarkable Purnima Prakash ‘missed activism.

“We don’t it asessential a substitute to edWhile tastes of boiled rags,see is the fuel on social activists inexperimenting with acknowledge tea, sensibly the doing camellia sinensis, there are many kindred meetings call’ recruitment drive.

“Through this method, printing pamphlets, but one away which the and enterprise runs. creasing prevalence the cellphone in activwith the fiddlyofbusiness of teapots and spirits there. apart, tea is the the IACout were ableWater to generate more thanmost five that enhances he says. to a Chi- caddies The story ofinteraction,” tea began, according ism, there aredebates certainabout roles they it can and milkknow first or tea widely beverage in the world.

It is nese millionconsumed missed calls from unique numbers,” Cellphone-and-activism is alsoand a matter of first legend, in BC 2737. Emperor herbalist never “The cellphone,along by itself, cannot inplay. the cup.

Somewhere the way, mathe behind essays andcost books, theyinspiration say. “Sending out bulk SMSes thespeIAC economics.

SMSes need money many Shen Nung Bulk was sitting under a treeand while his sala initiate chaianything, was born.unless it is a deep crisis like ciality and bitter Not to groups nearly restaurants ₹50 lakh, which they debates. raised through it hard to Aspare.

“In groups servant find boiled water. few leaves from susthe theOn December gang a morning likerape this, in as IDelhi. take aIn sipnormal of the mention cultural rituals. donationcomplex from volunteers,” they add. tained individual donations and fundraistree fellbyinto the water, which turned into a sweet, mobilisation, which can strong stuff, allinvolves I can saystruggle, is “thank it god!”

A formal Japanese gathering last up ing, The IAC may have tea squeezed thecan cellphone it is hard to spend on bulk SMSes,” glorious golden colour.money Shen Nung took a sip only play a supportive part,” says Roy. to four involves intricate rules and says dry; buthours older,and grassroots-based movements Madhuresh Kumar, convenor of National shabnam minwalla is a journalist and author of and approved. p anima Six Spellmakers of Dorabji Street conversational gambits about tea caddies and Alliance use it with much more caution.

Though a welPeople’s Movement They The By theofthird century, tea was(NAPM). being men-

Cup fever

There is good reason why tea is the second most widely consumed beverage in the world

shabnam minwalla

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BEYOND THE FIELD

Losing their marbles The Australian performance at the Ashes, while being a nadir, isn’t an outlier. Batting line-ups around the world are succumbing to unexceptional bowling attacks as batsmen struggle with different formats suhrith parthasarathy

Oopsie daisy Australia were simply undone by England, their shambolic batting performance characterised by utter non-application of mind or technique Anywhere and everywhere The cellphone has catapulted numerous Indians into the worldwide web, bypassing the world of computers reuters m srinath

W Dial M for change ithin the first session of play on the first day of the fourth Ashes Test Match at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, Australia were bundled out for an astounding total of 60 runs. Having elected to field first, England’s bowling was consistently excellent, and they were aided by conditions that had just enough nip. The hometown boy Stuart Broad scalped eight Aussie victims, and he was particularly impressive in using the crease to vary his angles to outstanding effect. But this was by no means a performance any thrilln July 31, 1995, a call wasofmade from ing repute Calcutta from England.

For the mosteverypart, to Delhi.

It changed Australia were simply undone,everything as they had thing.

Or, nearly — been in the from thirdhow test at bytime, a shamweEdgbaston, work, spend robolic batting performance thatasleep. was charactermance, betray, to how we fall The call ised by utter non-application ofCommunimind or travelled from the then Minister of technique. cations Sukh Ram to West Bengal chief minismatch cricket, other sport, ofterTest Jyoti Basu.

Littlelike didmost those two hoary ten produces one-sided contests. part of gentlemen know that the deviceBut they held its premium, in theoryofatIndians any rate,—is(over the excelwould give millions 900 lence in sporting standards that it had is meant to million, at last count) — what they not beyield.

Contrary toHere popular prefore, autonomy. was aperception, gadget thatthe was as sent Australian batting line-up is—not devoid of deeply personal as footwear not to be talent. was thatand none of itscould batshared,Yet notitto be telling asked for which smen thedistances. wherewithal counter cover possessed improbable The to cellphone the under typical Enfreedopposition individuals fromwhat the were tyranny of the glish conditions.

As isand onlyits to whimsical be expected, Aushousehold landline worktralia failed to the recover their batting ings. Gone were days offrom waiting in line at a performance on spectrum the first morning, andmemhave PCO, or sharing with family now conceded Ashes to antoo English bers,abjectly or getting news the three weeks late. side is, at its best, promising and, its And, that suddenly, there was little need to at plan worst, beatable. ahead.eminently The cellphone became a personal beaOne most statistics from con forof thethe here andsignificant now. By bringing instanthe firstitsession’s play was that only eight of taneity, opened up a world of possibilities.

It the deliveries it took toways, bowl whether out Aushas 111 changed livesthat in multiple tralia wereit easy actually going on to hitbusithe by making to keep in touch or do stumps.

This,we in spend itself, our is a leisure damning indictness or how time.

The ment of thealso Australian batsmen’s flawed techcellphone catapulted millions of Indians nique.

Inworldwide English conditions, as is almost trite into the web, bypassing the world to observe, it’s imperative that batsmen, espeof computers. cially theof new ball, Singh. leave deliveries Takeagainst the case Poonam She hails both line and her length.

But, until from on Darjeeling, mother a tea their pickernumand ber eight batsman Mitchell in father, a supervisor in the teaJohnson estates. came She first to bat,tonone of12the Australians showed even as came Delhi years ago, looking for employ-

much as an inclination towards allowing the demands of limited overs cricket. Once a crickball to float through to the wicketkeeper. It’s eter makes a fundamental switch in his attione thing to make mistakes based on misjud- tude towards the art of batsmanship — gement. But it’s an altogether different thing towards a culture that demands that every to make no effort towards judging deliveries ball be met with a heavy bat — it’s difficult to and choosing which ones to play. The latter attune oneself to the rigours of Test matches. transgression is simply inexcusable at Test No doubt, there are some batsmen, such as match level.

England’s Alastair Cook and India’s CheteshWorryingly though, this Australian per- war Pujara, who have retained an aptitude for formance, while representing a nadir, isn’t an batting within largely traditional confines. outlier. Increasingly, batting line-ups around Their respective failures in limited overs the world, including England’s, have dis- games, though, make their methods unapplayed inherent fragility, ment. With the help of her and sister-in-law, she balne ka hunarpealing in an(Thank era where of to aa gaya you,much Life, for have often gone like nine soon found work down as the stay-in help of a family all the knocksa you’ve cricketer’s dealtfinancial me. You wellbeing may have pins unexceptional bowling in theto posh South Delhi neighbourhood of Va- not taught me depends performances in how toonwalk, but you have attacks.

“You just don’t the call her sant Vihar.

Back then, shesee would famleagues.

Yet, as Murali Vijay art of survival.)

One of thetaught most me theT-20 old-fashioned of thefrom significant ily once in two blunting or three weeks, a PCO in statistics — who hasused enjoyed the riches of Poonam has never a computer and new ball, ormarket. playersInscrapping the nearby 2006, she bought her the Indian Premier League — has considers cybercafés to be places of disrepute. was that only eight of through a tough wrote first cellphone, andspell,” is today the proud shown,toit’s very much But when herstill phone, she is apossipro. theowner 111 deliveries that it comes the Australian of a former Micromax Unite. Sheskipper continues toitwork ble for a player to bat in Test She tells me to switch on the Bluetooth so that took to have Ricky Ponting in a column last a reputation with the same family, has earned matches in aShe manner that is conshe can photos. arches her eyeAustralia bowled outtransfer week.

“It perfect seems asmutton though cutlets when and for her lightventionally chiselled. brow as I fumble through my settings. Of were actually going you loserotis, one wicket lose and four weight but heryou modes Vijay, who not long ago course she has a too Facebook acon to hit the stumps or five in aofrush, and the game channels communication was known mostly for his excount, with hundreds of friends goes them.” Ponting, have with changed beyond ploits in the has rapidly eson it. She evenIPL, uses Viber to stay among others, have pointed torecognition. tablished himself as inIndia’s in touch with close pals Singawards the advent, and establishWe meet in the spic-and-span mostBut dependable Test batsman. pore. most importantly, with The cellphone ment, of Twenty-20 as a primary cause a personal two-room quarter cricket she shares He has achieved through and her this cellphone shehard getswork to speak became for this decline batting with her sister in Satya.

Thetechniques. walls reliance recto her son twicemethods or thrice—aof week. beacon for the here on ‘unfashionable’ unquestionably element of truth areThere’s decorated with photos an of her ognising where his off-stump is, class and showcasA generous boy in XI has a and now to this theory.son, Although there are some nota- ing oodles ofcellphone nine-year-old Prashant, now patience and and he mental allowsstrength. mother ble exceptions, even those whoin spent their for- Yet, in his case studying at a boarding school too,son there is a catch.With Prashand to connect. mative yearsAlways honingquiet, their today skills in long-form Darjeeling.

Vijay, for all his T-20 adventures, first ant’s marks weighing onmade her cricket, thehas task of batting his name as mind, Poonamincreasingly is quieter stillfind as she an opener for Tamil Nadu who the forthcoming conversafor periods, message of giving the new its could justextended got a WhatsApp from herball son’s batbefor hours onfor end.

And his more retion will a hard one a concerned mother due, an It onerous task. news.

As theHe former England school. isn’t good has failed in cent rejuvenation as ason long-form cricketer has in Delhi and a young in Darjeeling. captain GrahamShe Gooch noted in 2013, the also come at the expense of a declining form most subjects. worries about the“It’s future, whole package of not only having the school, techni- in whether she should remove him from limited Just a ring overs away cricket. So, perhaps, it is diffical skills having the attitude, the or mental send himbut to his grandparents’ house wait cult most batsmen have tointernal make conThereforare roughly 400to million mitoughness, the discipline, the concentration. stant for him to settle down. betweentovarious grantstransitions in India, according the 2011formats, census.

Anyone can concentrate for 15-20 minutes, Her WhatsApp status messages often tellbut of and as long T-20 continues to risefamily in imporFor many ofasthem, removed from and to hundreds haveher to concenherscore stateTest of mind.

She you changes display tance, of Test matchabatting, more homes,the thequality cellphone becomes lifeline to distrate a long period of time.” photofor often — from portraits of herself juxta- than anythingand else,wives. is likely suffer. tant children Noto news is too small To awith largeflowers extent,tothe decline in the techniposed inspirational quotes.

To- or too petty to be messaged across. After all is a Chennai-based lawyer cal and mental aptitude batsmen is a conseday’s message reads: Itniofthokare dene ke liye suhrith what areparthasarathy filial relationships built on but the writer t@suhrith quence having to/adapt game the and shukriya,ofEh-Zindagi Chalneone’s ka na sahi,tosamexchange of the mundane and the everyday?

Across India, mobile phones have given millions of people what they didn’t have before — access to their loved ones and the world beyond, and autonomy

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Rajdev Pandey, a migrant from Bihar who has now lived in Kolkata for 40 years, is keeping track of his children with the cellphone, just like Poonam. He speaks to his seven children nearly every day, querying them about their studies and work. Life was very different when he first moved to the city. He spent his days rolling rasgullas and frying samosas without calling home for months. He made annual vis-with a rough day? We slam doors. Or ow do we deal its to his village when the rains lashedOr down. scream. whine. But what if we were given a space, This is when he checked on his crops, married, equipped with furniture and weapons to vent out our frusand fathered his progeny.

The news trations?

Whatofif the we could have grand slams with pots and birth of a child would reach himclocks by post, often pans, and cups? Sounds like paradise. Sounds like three weeks after the event.

When the first cellRage Room.

In “high-strung” Toronto, a new space is invitphone arrived in his village, it wastoinitially ing people cool off, while smashing radios and dinner considered common property and used to and doorknobs. For $20, the Rage plates, garden gnomes convey news of emergencies. in you Pan-composure. Project your hostilities on Room Today, promises dey’s village house alonebreakable there are objects, eight cellswing your bat, and boooom! The mere phones; one each for the children his wife. stuff feels therapeutic! thoughtand of breaking Within a decade all eight have hewn an individual connection with their loved ones and the world.

If the cellphone has helped connect families, it also separates this generation from the previous. While the elders in the family might concede the utility of the phone for staying in touch, for many younger people the phone is a He was tortured a grater, burning imported Western defining device for work.

Kannan is with a dapper goods like cheese and condoms, buttodidn’t a word 24-year-old belonging the say Bettakurumba protesting sanctions. Upset at is silent tribe in the lush hillsCheese of Gudalur in by thenature Nilgimountains of cheese and other ris. His Adivasi parents are labourers. Back in melancholic ballad called food being crushed into the Class X, working as a daily wager after school, Death of a Parmesan Kannan had saved enough money to buytells his the ground, protesters are using the sorry1100, talebut of aofshipment of for- song and joking about the efficafirst phone — a Nokia course. Even eign cheeses that the comes in to cy of the Russian condom. Samas a high school student he foresaw value ove it, hate it, but you can’t ignore it. That Russia andschool, is incinerated. of the gadget. After leaving he workedThe ple this: If you see smoke and is what Tinder has ensured with its datsong may beenback imagined, smell burning rubber, don’t call in Kochi for a few years andhave is today in ing app that allows you to swipe right for Like it could nothas be spent closerthe to the the fire department. It’s just Gudalur with Thebut Shola Trust. He and left for No Like. While this is a rather Last month, Russian presi- your neighbours using Russian last few monthstruth. mapping the growth and heartless exercise, it has emerged that Tinder dent Putin called for contraceptives. Ouch. spread of lantana in Vladimir Mudumalai, Bandipur og lovers are up in arms against ‘God’s Own actually cares about what people (read the and Wayanad.

While he used his first phone Country’. Infuriated by reports that for theSMS state media) thinks of it. When Vanity Fair blasted and calls, to stay in touch with friends, plans to cull two lakh stray dogs, canine today admirers the app for bringing on a ‘dating apocalypse’, his phone is his office. He uses it for acand animal rights groups are taking theircounting, protests research and coordination, and is Tinder got all hot and heavy on Twitter. But a practically everywhere. #BoycottKerala has been little further investigation proved that much adept at Google calendar, Google docs and one of the most visible hashtags on Twitter in the of its PR spiel was just sweet talk. No, people other applications. His parents have stayed last few weeks. Photos of dead dogs — in thousands in North Korea are not finding love on Tinder. clear of owning a cellphone, but when they — surface every time you type “Kerala tourism”.

And it is not the domain of only the lone wolf, wish to speak to a relative, they use Kannan’s Some reports, however, suggest that the images are sister’s. as just over 45 per cent of Tinder users are ator his elder from Pakistan. An online petition to spare the dogs tached.

Well,Lotus as isTemple expected, this he data But keeping track of loved ones can also Connection made (Top) Poonam with her son Prashant at Delhi’s just before left arises for boarding Chidambaram threethat yearsTinder ago users are giving has already listed more than 50,000 signatures. the premise prove a hazardous affair. Susheela, who ar- school in Darjeeling; Susheela moved to Chennai fromfrom Some have taken the fight one step further — one truthful answers to surveys... that in itself is a rived in Chennai three years ago from Chideem their absence as something amiss. animal rights group urged people to make false (where she helped her family cultivate rice and til), learnt this the hard way.rather far-fetched hope. dambaram Of large build and sashaying hips, she works Home to roughly 130 men, the urban shelter bookings at Kerala hotels and cancel them later. as a domestic help in five homes in Chennai. opposite the National Club of Fatehpuri in Old Her taxi-driver husband has signed up as an Delhi tells an altogether different — and a rathOla driver and recently bought a Toyota Etios. er silent — cellphone story. Men with no perBut Susheela isn’t too pleased. She feels that manent address in the Capital pay ₹10 to his ‘work trips’ to Mahabalipuspend 24 hours in this clean but ram are a façade for a spartan barrack. It is Sunday afrendezvous with his lover. Using ternoon, and most of them are her teenage son’s help, she reow much ruckus could cowbells make? Well, enough for neighbours to go to court. In a hamlet near Zurich, swathed in heavy sleep. We noWe are so corded herbells husband on the 27 cows grazing the highlands, chiming their bells, are giving residents sleepless nights.

Clinking are tice cellphones in a few hands, accustomed to phone.

She plays her husband’s noise pollution, the neighbours cried. The municipality instructed the farmer to go slow on bells.

However, cows and the owners say they have had hearing phones ring entreaties to by thethe Saidapet lover without music were not his idea of a farm and he appealed. The higher court, though, has chosen to stand them only for three or four days. that we deem their on will loop:roam “When shall we meet? residents and wants the bells removed from the cows’ necks at night. From 10pm to 7am, cows in the We are puzzled at that. Brajesh, absence as You know I like the way your hair fenced pasture quietly, while neighbours sleep. Of course, if the farmer appeals again, night music continues. who works with Society for the something amiss smells. Next time do adorn your Promotion of Youth and Masses hair with malli pu (jasmine flowand visits the shelter every day, ers).” She refuses to delete the resays the men don’t hold on to cording, saving it as a reminder their phones for long as they sell of her husband’s errant ways them for their next fix — whether and a spur for her own wrath. While the cell- it’s drugs, alcohol or eraser fluid. Paras, a 19phone might have allowed her to trap her hus- year-old who works as a bus cleaner/ loader/ laband (he promises to redeem his ways), she bourer bought his ‘Chinese’ phone for ₹300 a turns to “higher authorities” for possible solu- few days ago. He hasn’t saved any numbers on tions. On the bidding of a sadhu, she observes it, because he has no family to stay in touch a maun vrat (vow of silence and fasting) once a with. He doesn’t know where they are, and week to try and keep her husband on the they don’t know he is at a ‘rain basera’. Perstraight and narrow track. When her phone haps he will sell his phone in a few days. But rings on Fridays, she pays no heed to it. for now, Angry Birds is keeping him busy and away from the realities of the street. For 24 Brief respite hours, that is autonomy.

We are so accustomed to hearing phones ring and seeing faces cast in a blue glow that we nandini nair Digital native Kannan of the Bettakurumba tribe bought his first cellphone in high school

Rage against the machine High-strung Toronto lets off steam by demolishing furniture

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Death of a parmesan

Burning Western cheese and condoms in Russia

Let the dogs stray Kerala faces online ire for decision to cull canines

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Love me…Hate me…Tinder

The dating app cares, only if you’re in the media

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Cowbells rob neighbours’ sleep

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in-faq by joy bhattacharjya

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n our 68th birthday, a tribute to one of the most liberating inventions ever. This quiz is dedicated to the mobile phone.

here,there & elsewhere

The ring to freedom

1

The first automated cellular network was launched in Japan by NTT in 1979. Which was the first nation to launch a 2G cellular network in 1991?

Tail tale S

kunks are not dangerous in the usual ways: they don’t bite or scratch or sting. When threatened, all they do is turn away, raise up their big, fluffy tails and squirt their victim with a jet of stinky liquid. But the smell is reportedly awful enough that even grizzly bears back away from the small, black-andwhite striped animal. So when I open my eyes and see a young skunk sniffing inquisitively at my face, the only thought in my head is: this might be a good time to die. It seems especially helpful that I’m already in a hearse. I shut my eyes and lie very still.

I can hear Bins and Birk consulting one another in whispers but I can’t hear what they’re saying. Presently I hear them moving about. The hearse wobbles a bit, as its large back doors are opened, there’s a faint rustling.

After a longish pause, I get the sense of Birk’s huge arm stretching over me, followed by the scent of salami.

Then I hear excited snuffles from the skunk, followed by happy chewing sounds right in front of my nose.

Before I can decide that the feeding has grown a little too cosy for comfort, I hear Bins call the all clear.

“Skunk secured!” he says to me. “You can get up now!”

I open my eyes and am relieved to see an absence of scent-ejecting

cornerstone

mammals. I’m still moving slowly and carefully, just in case it might be hiding under my elbow or inside my bra (who can say what these feral skunks might get up to?) when I turn to see Bins and Birk wreathed in soppy smiles. They’re gazing at the black, fluffy creature now lying in Bins’ arms. “He’s SO CUTE!” coos Birk while Bins murmurs, “... ‘oo’s Daddy’s liddle widdle skunky-punky, huh?”

I begin spluttering “How —? What —?”

Because I’ve never heard of anyone befriending one of these temperamental little squirters. When Bins finally notices

me, he says in his most isn’t-it-obvious? tone, “I’m holding his tail down! He can’t spray!” It turns out that Birk, in one of his many avatars, worked for a humane pest-control company. That’s where he learnt of skunk traps which cleverly prevented the tail being raised, while causing no harm to the owner. So while Birk distracts the skunk with a piece of meat, Bins reaches in from the behind, grabs the tail and scoops up the critter.

End of story. The newly christened Punky settles down without further ado.

We all climb back into the car. Birk drives, while Bins holds Punky asleep in his arms. The tail has been neatly tied with a piece of twine to one of his back legs, “In case he has a nightmare,” says Bins, “and sprays me by mistake.”

We speed along the grey ribbon of highway, debating the perils of skunk family life and the politics of stench. “If you had to choose a stink for yourselves,” I ask, “what would it be?” “Rotting jackfruit,” says Bins. “Dead seals,” says Birk.

“Angry skunk,” I say, “and I hope we never smell one.” manjula padmanabhan, author and artist, writes of her life in the fictional town of Elsewhere, US, in this weekly column

2

In July 2015, the Russian government released a public safety video and a series of leaflets about one specific danger. Over a dozen deaths and hundreds of reported injuries from which activity prompted these safety instructions?

3

In 2015, Magnolia films released Tangerine, a film starring Kiki Rodriguez and James Ransone. It had premiered earlier at the Sundance Film Festival this year. What is unique about this theatrical release?

4

Texting has created a whole new subculture of acronyms and codes, and some like ‘lol’ and ‘afaik’ have entered the mainstream. What would be conveyed by the message ‘Cd9’?

5

In 2013, the Vatican used a specific structure to shield the Sistine Chapel from electronic eavesdropping and secret mobile messages when the papal enclave to select the next pope was on. After which scientist is this structure, used to completely block out cellular signals, named?

6 7

In what way was the Sharp J-SH04 camera, released in 2001, a first in mobile phone history?

On February 8, 2014, which hugely popular mobile game was removed from download sites by creator Dong Nguyen as he felt it was distracting and wasteful? Surely, a first in the mobile gaming industry.

8

The Nokia 8110 was one of the first high-end ‘slider’ phones. It was also known as the ‘banana’ phone because of its prominent curvature. After which film in the ’90s did the phone gain a cult following ?

9

The popularity of ‘selfies’ has spawned a huge number of other mobile phone photo themes. What’s the difference between a ‘belfie’ and a ‘welfie?’

10

In January 2015, which organisation launched a safety app for women called ‘Himmat?’

Answers 1. Finland. It was launched by Radiolinja on the new GSM standard. Nokia’s worldwide domination of the market had a lot to do with the development 2. Taking selfies. Particularly at risk were ‘roofers’, who got on to tall structures to take selfies, and train-track selfies 3. First film released in theatres which was shot completely on the iPhone 5s 4. Code 9 signals that parents are around. Cd 99 is used once the coast is clear 5. Faraday Cages, named after the British inventor Michael Faraday 6. It was the first production phone with a built-in camera. Camera phones became so popular that by 2006, Nokia was the world’s largest producer of mobile devices 7. Flappy Bird. Apparently Nguyen has had a change of heart and there is a new version in the works 8. Matrix. It was the phone used in the first Matrix film. Later films had in-film tie-ups with Samsung, which provided the phone for Matrix Reloaded 9. A ‘belfie’ is a picture of one’s derriere, a ‘welfie’ is a selfie taken while working out 10. The Delhi Police. The UP government is planning a similar app, to be titled ‘Nirbhaya’

joy bhattacharjya is a quiz master and Project Director, FIFA U-17 World Cup t@joybhattacharj

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