India is new !!

I have been visiting my home country pretty much once every year. And I have been doing this since August 2004. But this time it was different. India is new now. Things have changed a lot. They might have changed for quite some time now but this time around i noticed it. As like any other change, some were good and some not that good. From the time I landed there I could feel that I was in a totally different world. Every other thing was calling out to me "see this..i was this way before". The people, there behaviour, the things around and generally all the stuff..I had decided that I would write about it once I land back in US. There "were" so many things on my mind I wanted to talk about but I am finding it hard to recollect be nonetheless I am gonna give it a shot. To make it easier for my brain, I would be doing this in parts. Part I : Dude you don't have a cellphone ?? you just see them everywhere. everybody owns it. From the street side hawkers to the rich. To have cellphone not a big deal in india, I say. Now what matters is what model of cell phone you carrying. Nokia pretty much covers the market back in India. But this are changing. Being the "low cost, high value" (read cheap) proponents we are brands like LG, Samsung and few other Chinese mobile manufactures are also enjoying the market pie. Everyone wants there cellphone to have anything and everything they don't need. Bluetooth is what they need, given that the only use for it is the hands-free they either never use or don't own. BTW, bluetooth handsets, i felt, are still to expensive. they sell starting from 2500 Rs. Having mp3 player in your cellphone is a must. Now the fun part, so what mp3 player-cell phones are hit all over the world,everyone wants it. plug in your headphones and wolla you are in your own musical world. right? wrong. Back in India, you don't use your headphones, well almost all the song are being played on the speakerphone of the cellphone. yes we use it as a damn boom-box. Doesn't really matter where you are, doesn't matter if the people around you don't really enjoy the same taste of music as you do (unless you are playing one of himmesh's song). you just play along. Actually, I think that is fun sometimes but not all the time. There is this thing about "miss call" which you we will hear a lot among the cellphone carrying teenagers. What it means is to call someone on the cellphone let it ring for ring or two and then hang up. This little is the most versatile piece of communication indians have come up with. The main advantage being doesn't cost a dime and gets the message over. you want to tell a friend (girl friend) you left the office for home, give a missed call. Want someone to call you, give a missed call. wish somebody good morning, give a missed call. what the heck..if you are missing somebody,give a missed call. this, of course, works only if both the parties have a prior understanding of what each missed call means. Believe me its silly but fun. It gets insane when you see people, waiting for someone's missed call and even worse fight over why he/she didn't give her a missed call. hmmmm.. Life just got interesting. There are a lot of things, the new cellphone carrying population needs to be made aware. cellphone ettiquittes being one. People tend to talk loudly on there cellphone at a public place. The cellphone is never silent mode, no matter where you are and it just has to ring. One common thing I have seen, mainly in our parents and there kind, if there cellphone rings, they would pull it out slowly, keep staring at the screen trying to read the name of the caller. Even worse if there is just a number and no name, they start thinking whose number this could be, at there own sweet pace. Mind you all this while the cellphone is just ringing. No they won't turn down the volume, as they don't know how,most of the time. its still ringing. Anyways, by the time they realize they cannot recollect the number and the fact that well "incoming is free" and try to get the phone, the person on the other end is almost dead. Cellphones in india are still craze. Everyone wants to get the best and biggest on the market. What I feel they are missing is the responsibility as a cellphone owner. But this is changing. Its improving. But either ways, I just love the way it all happens in INDIA.