July 8, 2003

Mobile India

CALCUTTA, INDIA - I was trying to have a real live, one-on-one, face-to-face conversation with my cousin while stuck to the vinyl seat of a "shared" cab in Calcutta when I was interrupted by an irritating jumble of sounds. The din was coming from the front seat where a Punjabi cab driver and a heaving, pear-shaped Bengali businessman had sandwiched a helpless young student. In that bit of space, where the after-work stench of sweaty, cranky people mixing with each other becomes unavoidable, these three were feigning complete ignorance of one another. They were all engaged in conversation, simultaneously and independently.on their cell phones. I, having "accidentally" tossed my Nokia out of a moving car recently, after discovering I had accumulated 47 voice mails in the space of an hour, couldn't join the fun.

Calcutta has always been a noisy city. But like an annoying ring tone shattering the grim silence on a Monday morning metro car, the unfiltered noise of modernity is creating static between Calcuttans. It's hard to avoid people in a city of 14 million. They are everywhere-stepping on your heels to walk faster, elbowing you in the gut as you get on the bus, dripping sweat on your portfolio. Here it is always a war zone, always rush hour, always gridlock-and there is no reprieve. Except when you're on the mobile. Suddenly, holding that sleek, smaller-the-better phone give you an invisible shield that deflects all surrounding chaos.

The cell phone is to the working Calcuttan what headphones are to the sullen teenager, head-banging at the dinner table. While "on call" the cell phone user can selectively deal with that one person on the other end of the line, putting the rest of the milieu "on hold." This was fine with me until I found myself put "on hold," ignored, blocked from making a connection with the cell-phone savvy masses. And the mass appeal for cell phones is disturbingly apparent in Calcutta, especially when I find rickshaw drivers on my street corner carrying them.

A few days ago, the monsoon season began in Calcutta. That morning, with overflowing sewers, my jeans hiked above my knees, I waded through garbage in search of public transportation to work. I splashed up to a rickshaw driver. He was tucked cozily under the hood of his vehicle, feet up on the bicycle seat, talking on his cell phone. I waited for him to get off, tapping my feet underneath the water, squishing around the mud between my toes. I asked him if he would take me to the bus stand and offered extra payment. No response. No acknowledgement.

It used to be that even on rainy days, I could fight with a rickshaw driver, bribe him, cajole him to take me where I needed to be. But this time, I couldn't pay him to give a damn. I finally go on a three-wheeled auto, when suddenly the chiming of a popular Bollywood film song sounded and the driver picked up his mobile. He talked to some giggling woman on the other end, completely ignoring my requests to lower the waterproof curtain. The rain slapped my face for the whole ride.

I arrived at work covered up to my knees in mud, with drenched hair and late for the Monday editorial meeting. I quickly submitted an idea about the prevalence of cell phones in Calcutta. "That story's old," my editor said. "I see lots of rickshaw drivers with cell phones. Talk about social mobility. I can't remember what I did before I had mine."

Of course, having a mobile would only mean mobility if the rickshaw driver didn't have to haul people around for a living anymore. However, everyone agreed with the editor who uses her cell phone to call down the hall to the boy at the snack bar for her coffee, who also has a cell. In fact, everyone seems to have the mobile chip surgically implanted in their brains.except for me. But this is not a bad thing: since ditching my phone, I've been thinking more clearly, and writing and speaking in complete sentences again. No more text messages where I pay 10 cents to say: C U SOON. How did we talk to each other before cell phones, before we measured our words in daytime minutes? Can people also become obsolete like old cell phone models? Am I that disconnected? In any case, feel free to ignore me.

This article was originally published on www.duckseason.org.