Unreserved Chaos

The other day I had to rough it out in the ‘cattle class’ (general compartment) of a superfast train for a three-and-half-hour long journey, for want of an alternative. As it was around 6.30 pm and the train was nearly criss-crossing the country from Ernakulam to Delhi, I did not even take a chance to try my luck in a sleeper class compartment.

Earlier while buying the ticket at Koyilandi (a mofussil station near Kozhikode) for Mangalore I had enquired if it was any way possible to upgrade it. The woman at the ticket counter replied in the negative and warned that as it was already dusk I might risk getting fined if I travelled sleeper class with an ordinary ticket!

Having travelled many times in the reserved sleeper class for long trips (lasting 2-3 days) I was all too familiar with the inconvenience caused by those without reservation. Hence I decided not to be a cause of their misery and braced myself for the din, bustle and stench of the general compartment.

They are generally the first or last compartment of the rake and are the most unkempt ones. The train arrived about 20 minutes late and I made a dash to the last compartment, which looked already full with little foot space left. 

I did make it to the passage of the train and moved further into the aisles aiming to get a seat. A couple of years of commuting 'sardine class' in Mumbai’s suburban trains have taught me that getting into the aisle was the best way to ease suffocation, prevent achy shoulders and even get a seat in the bargain. 

About two stations later lady luck smiled, though the seat I got was hardly comfortable. Nearly six passengers were squeezed into a row seat, which was actually meant for 3-4 people.

The passengers were a mix of locals who were going on short haul journeys lasting a couple of hours and the migrant workers, who were in for a long haul to their home towns in the country’s cow belt. This under-class also happens to be the mainstay in general compartments of almost all the trains that chug along the Indian Railway’s expansive network. 

As for Kerala these migrant labourers provide the much-needed brawn to its acute shortage of manual labour, thanks to the upward mobility of its natives, who prefer white collar jobs or migrate to Gulf countries. After months of back breaking work at construction sites and other places that require hard labour, they were on their way to meet their near and dear ones. 

From the snatches of conversations I overheard I could gather that some were going to attend marriages, some to fix the roof or flooring of their houses and some even to reclaim their dues from recalcitrant and shifty borrowers.

In Loop With Wireless World

Though the way they live or travel may not have changed from their predecessors (could see the same old padlocked antique looking trunk boxes and cloth bags stocked under the seats), there was one tangible difference.

The new generation migrant workers have definitely got a toe hold into the wireless digital world, all thanks to low call rates and the entry of cheap mobile phones in the market. The presence of large number of smartphones (mostly of the Chinese and Indian make) in the compartment came as quite a revelation to me.

These labourers may be light years away from following the Mahesh Murthy-Mark Zukerberg free basics vs net neutrality debate and the ad blitzkrieg by Facebook, but they appeared quite savvy and nimble fingered while handling the devices they had in hand. Almost everybody was busy playing games, listening to music and watching downloaded movies to sustain them for the long journey. Some were even WhatsApping.

A couple of them were on the lookout for sockets to plug in their phone chargers. I am sure some of those ancient trunk boxes may even have power banks stocked in them!

A couple of years ago there was a news item stating that India has more mobile phones than toilets, a finding that was not so flattering and pointed to the skewed priorities of our countrymen. Now the day is not far when we may hear that the country has more smartphones than toilets!!

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Nokia 3310: From Cool Gadget to Dead Weight

Sigh! This picture of mine is now doing rounds in Facebook, much to the amusement of smartphone generation. Though it pains me a lot but can't blame them. After all the cool quotient of a gadget has a very short lifespan - barely a couple of years if one is lucky, and I count myself as one.

Nearly a decade ago I was a hot property and the darling of every dude and wannabes. My parent company Nokia ruled the airwaves and was living up to its ad slogan ‘connecting people’.

And I was the face of its success. My sleek antenna-less exterior appealed a lot to the hipsters, who were graduating out of primitive pagers. My sturdy exterior was an added plus as these teeny boppers are very careless when it comes to handling gadgets.

When I entered the Indian market, the cell phone call charges were hovering at Rs 14/minute and even incoming calls were being charged, plus the customs authorities were extracting their pound of flesh through duties. Hence the early sales reports were not very encouraging.

But once the call charges started plunging and incoming calls became free, there was no looking back. I became the most happening handset in the regular, grey and even the second hand markets. Gradually the customs duty too got reduced and the grey market began losing its sheen.

In a country where the landline penetration was abysmal and one had to wait for years to get a connection - and that too after greasing many palms, our entry was a great liberator and leveller. As the cell phone penetration started increasing I started figuring in the resale market and began entering homes where basic amenities like toilets and running water were non-existent and a landline phone was even beyond the realm of fantasy.

People ranging from students to businessmen to senior citizens started exploring my dexterity. Even those who were not well versed in English used their own ingenuity to circumvent the handicap. They used code language to store numbers on their phones. Hence it was 'BB' for wife and 'DD' for sister. Similarly they also used their ingenuity to send text messages. The 'snake' game became quite popular especially among gurkhas employed to guard the apartments. They would while away their leisurely afternoons playing the game.

My nearest competitor was Samsung R220. Though its blue backlit display gave a futuristic feel, the external antenna betrayed a dated look. It was also perceived as not so good receiver of signals and was no match to my durability. The other competitor was of course my cousin - Nokia 3315. It somehow was not as good looking as myself (honestly I am not blowing my trumpet) and though it was lighter, it had a tacky plastic feel.

My sales started plummeting once phones with facilities such as FM radio and camera, notably Nokia 6610 and 6630 and later the N-series, started appearing in the market. The emergence of Moto Razr too caused a body blow to my popularity and I got relegated as a product confined to resale market.

The entry of Blackberry and other smart phones caught my parent company on the wrong foot and things were never the same again. First we started losing out in the higher end segment but later we got reduced to an also ran player in all the segments.

Now we have become a butt of ridicule and there are many jokes surrounding Nokia in general and myself in particular. The most popular one, which figured in the social networking site Reddit, has a photo of myself and an  iPhone. The caption below the iPhone image was “Falls to the floor/Break the screen” and below mine it was “Falls to the floor/Break the floor.”

 

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Beeped Out

While watching Gangs of Wasseypur, I came across one of those rare comical scenes in an otherwise gritty marathon of a movie (in two parts) soaked in blood and gore, set in the badlands of Bihar/Jharkhand. The hero Nawazuddin Siddiqui flaunts a pager in a mofussil tapori fashion to impress his lady love Huma Qureshi.

I am sure many of the present day smartphone wielding hipsters may not have even heard about pagers. And many who saw the movie were seeing that matchbox like device for the first (and probably the last) time.

It was one of those electronic gadgets which died a premature death, thanks to the technologically superior mobile phone and a free fall in call and text message charges. The fact that one could  only receive messages and one had to call up the pager operator to send a message were major handicaps.

Back in the mid-1990s, it enjoyed a pride of place among the yuppies, almost on par with what an i-pad commands now. Company bigwigs and executives were doled out Motorola's pager sets (it had a monopoly in India) and it gave them a kick to wield them tucked to their belts. At public places a beep from a pager often used to draw admiring glances, often laced with envy.

However little did these executives realise that they were, in fact, falling prey to the first version of 'electronic handcuff' being applied on them by the corporates to ruin their free time and holidays. Later on that role was taken up by mobile phones, laptops, blackberries and i-pads. Remember Hrithik Roshan in Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara?

The  introduction of mobile phones in the country did sound a alarm for pager operators, but the prohibitively high mobile phone call charges and handset costs was a cause of some comfort for them. Mobile phone initially was described as a rich man's toy and almost no communication expert back then saw it as a gamechanger in India as it later turned out to be.

The subsequent reduction in cell phone handset prices and call charges soon pushed down pagers to downmarket status. Pager beeps at public places started inviting scorn and derision.

I remember a pager dealer commenting in some magazine (don't recall which one) that earlier his clients used to be doctors, engineers, high class lawyers, but now he has plumbers, carpenters and automobile mechanics sign up as subscribers. I also recall a friend of mine saying, "If you have mobile phone, cool; if you do not have one, no problem; but if you have a pager, people will look down upon you."

Pager's death knell came when incoming calls on cell phones became free. After that it was a swift and steep slide to the e-waste bin of history.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat