II. Newlyweds Deepa and Saurabh
recently moved to Mumbai. Deepa is
captivated with the idea of creating
a home like those of the “beautiful
people” she’s always reading about in
glossy magazines. Saurabh, a practical engineer, is not one to spend
money on interior decoration. So
Deepa creates her fantasy home with
her own money, saved from before
her marriage. When he asks how
much she’s spent, she usually lies.
One day, Deepa goes to a closeout sale in Mumbai’s fashionable
Bandhni district and gets a great
deal on beautiful rugs and wallpaper.
The prices are so low that, ironically,
she ends up spending more than
she’d planned. But then at least
Saurabh will never know how much.
Suddenly, Deepa freezes. She’s
just remembered that whenever she
uses her credit card, her bank sends
an instant message to her cell phone
detailing transactions as a security
measure. And she lent Saurabh her
cell phone this morning because his
was being repaired. At that very
moment he could be reading how
much she spent on decoration today,
and worse yet, how much she’d actually been spending over the months...
III. Young Raju lives with his
mother, sister, younger brother,
grandparents, two aunts, and five
cousins in Kunjipur, a large rural
village in the northern state of Uttar
Pradesh. Like many men from the
region, Raju’s father and two uncles
support their families by working
in the Middle East. Most houses in
Kunjipur don’t have landline phones,
nor do Kunjipuris own cell phones.
There is one public phone booth in
the village square.
The family has just received some
interesting cards from the bank, one
for his mother and one for each of his
aunts. Raju’s father had explained
that these cards, which hardly
anyone in the village had ever seen
before, much less used, would enable
them to get money from the state
bank whenever they needed it. The
family will no longer have to wait
for Raju’s father and uncles to risk
bringing cash with them on their
long trips back home.
As the only literate member of the
household, Raju is entrusted with the
cards. The accompanying letters tell
him that there is a number he needs
to have, a “PIN,” before they can use
the cards. At that moment “Postman
Uncle” rides up on his bicycle. The
affable mail carrier is like a member
of the family. Since Raju had learned
to read, Postman Uncle no longer has
to write letters for the family, but he
now carries with him a mobile phone
as part of a new government campaign for villages with inadequate
landlines.
Postman Uncle dials Raju’s father
and hands Raju the phone. Raju’s
father tells him that for security, he’ll
send a text message with the PIN
numbers. Voila! A series of numbers
appears for each card.
Raju feels like a maharaja with
his three cards. All three families
now depend on him to get the money
from the bank. What power! His
mind whirls with at the possibilities: Perhaps his mother and aunts
will give him a small gratuity for
the service, or maybe, just maybe,
he should simply take it for himself.
Meanwhile, Postman Uncle pedals on
to the next house, puffed up with a
sense of pride and importance. His
cell phone had been the conduit to
important information that enabled
groundbreaking new technology.
When he shows all the neighbors the
numbers Raju’s father sent, everyone
will know how important a person
Postman Uncle really is…
Individualism, Collectivism and
the Mobile Paradox
Plunged into the mobile-phone
revolution, the characters in
these stories have run smack
into their own culture’s dominant characteristics.
In India, as in most of Asia,
society, groups, and families are
valued over individual members.
Space, objects, and technology
are very often shared. Social sci-
