Shanty of a wonderland

Pulkit Datta

A CITY  barely on the map until a couple of decades ago, Gurugram today is bursting with countless glitzy multi-level shopping malls, golf courses and designer studios selling Hermes and Louis Vuitton. Bentleys and Porsches shimmer in automobile showrooms. A Playboy club just got inaugurated. Residential towers, like my own, are sprouting like concrete weed.

Affluent areas are however surrounded by impoverished edges , with populace of migrants, who work on construction sites, as security guards or domestic help, living with their families in slums and underdeveloped villages — illustrating the gap between the haves and have-nots.

I happened to visit a nearby slum for fixing a flat tyre of my bicycle, having got references of some handy shop from my maid. The adjacent kiosk had a billboard of a popular telecommunication brand with a recent offer,  together with a handwritten poster pasted on the walls — ‘SIMs avalabel  here - Firee Internet till March 2017’.

Having heard stories of  long queues outside the stores of this brand in the malls and  markets, the prospects of laying hands over one from this seemingly accessible place got the better of my curiosity. I entered the shanty and asked the owner, almost with a preconceived notion of hearing a ‘no’, whether the SIM was indeed available. He nodded in the affirmative.

He asked for my Adhaar number, typed it into an app on his mobile, and pop came out all the details on the screen — my name, photograph, address, etc. He then connected a paraphernalia, not longer than my index finger, with a glass scanner on the tip, into one of the ports of the mobile and directed me to touch the blinking screen to register my finger impression.

It was instant déjà vu, for I felt like standing in front of the interviewing officer at the visa section of an embassy. Only the interruption by a fellow customer with a request to top-up his mobile number with a talk time of Rs 30 broke my stupor.

My tryst with this wonderland reached its climax when finally he slid his hand into his drawer and produced a sealed envelope carrying the SIM. There was a ‘QR’ code printed on this packet, which he again scanned through his humble mobile.

Voila! Some online computations, some data processing and the SIM now belonged to me, duly linked to my Adhaar card! No paperwork, no signatures, no photocopies, no passport-size photographs, no nonsense.

Meanwhile outside the shop, there were mongrels chasing swines over territorial claims and an oblivious cow chewing the cud in the middle of the pavement, while the sewage flowed uncovered.

I left with a feeling of accomplishment and awe — data SIM with unlimited free usage for a couple of months in the pocket and aquiring it in the most advanced manner from the unlikeliest of place. 

Internet penetration is changing the world as we know it today... The Times They Are A-Changin’! Get a flat tyre fixed to experience it firsthand.