(Sandip Roy is traveling this week. This episode originally aired in 2014)
My mother's phone has just stopped working. As in the caller can hear her but she cannot hear a thing. And my mother has never bothered to learn to text. So this is how we communicate now. It's like something out of a spy film.
I call.
<PHONE _RING>
She answers and says she still cannot hear a thing.
MA1: Hello Hello kichhu shuntey paarchi na
Now that she's been alerted I send her a message with my question. For example do we have oyster sauce at home.
She calls me back and gives me her reply. Blindly. Like floating a bottle with a message into the sea.
I respond with a text message saying OK. It's my version of saying Roger that.
<KEYSTROKE>
She sends back a random keystroke text message to say basically Over and Out.
Then Distrustful of this one-way process she makes my sister call me anyway.
SISTER1: I have a cryptic message from Ma. We have sauce.
Of course this make the entire carefully set-up handshake protocol moot. But communication in the 21st century is no laughing matter.
This is Sandip Roy in Kolkata.
We grew up in a world where phones routinely did not work. We would keep getting a wrong number. We had cross connections where we listened to other people's conversations for hours. Phones would give up the ghost at the mere sight of storm clouds.
And once it died there was no telling when the government telephone department would deign to fix it. In a country were 600 million people had only 2 million land lines The laws of Demand and supply were against us. Indian politician Shashi Tharoor told a story about that at the launch of his book The Elephant, The Tiger and the Cellphone.
About how the communication minister told a parliamentarian in 1984 that phones were a luxury in India not a right.
ST1:.
And the government had no obligation to provide better service and if the honourable member was dissatisified with his service he was free to return his instrument since there was an 8 year long waiting list for people waiting for the telephone.
Mobile phones changed all that. It leapfrogged India into the 21st century. There are over 900 million mobile phones in the country compared to some 28 million landlines. The tele-density of the country is over 73 percent.
The phone is no longer a luxury. It's a necessity. Actually more than a necessity. It's an addiction. I don't know what to do with myself anymore in public transport without my phone.
It's a status symbol. Apple had its first midnight launch in India with cheerleaders and pom poms for iPhone6 in a country where stories constantly remind us two-thirds of the population live on less than $2 a day.
As CNN IBN reports (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzjHGnh6Da0)
IBN1: According to reports Apple has shipped more than 50,000 units to take care of the expected demand until the second wave of devices reach the Indian shores.
OR
IBN2: I don't think I am going to be able to afford these phones. But a lot of people are coming forward. Most are buying the 16 GB variant.
My great aunt eloped from home in 1942. She tells me that story of her great romance and how her brother smuggled letters to and fro in his socks.
RD1: barin aabar juto modhye diye mojar tolay diye chithi aana gona. Ekta ekta petam.
All I can think is my god. How DID she do it without a phone? Forget an elopement, is even romance possible anymore without a smartphone? When phones were a luxury we knew how to work around them because we couldn't depend on them. Now we are just helpless without them. We don't even know anyone's numbers anymore.
My mother still charges her defunct phone. She needs it to tell the time at night. Once she used a wristwatch for that. But the phone promised to take care of all those needs. Phones might be getting smarter, but I am not sure if we are.
This is Sandip Roy in Kolkata for KALW.