Google’s Saathi :Women and the Smartphone

As night fell in the tiny hamlet of Nangli Jamawat, a light glowed within one section of a small two-roomed home, like a soft beacon. The house was rectangular, built of brick with gray cement coarsely patted over its surface. Inside the main room were two wooden beds, side by side. On one, two young children were sleeping soundly, neatly curled into cashews. On the other lay Satish, on his back, as his wife, Phoolwati, readied to join him. A cool desert zephyr had seeped under the door and into the room; human warmth was a welcome relief. In a bare corner, on the cement floor, a thin white wire coiled to a rectangular object that was the source of the light. Phoolwati had set her smartphone down to charge. As she lay down, before she could shut her eyes, the rectangle of light faded into a black mirror. Room, home, fields, village became night. Phoolwati had been the first to show her fellow villagers a smartphone. “Want to see a miracle?” she asked a group of women sitting together and tossing rice on wide bamboo sieves, separating the grain from its residual husk. “There’s this new thing called Google—want to see?” “Goo-gull? What’s that, a game?” replied one of the women blandly, bored, barely looking up as she kept tossing grain. Her name was Chameli. “No, no, it’s a really useful thing. It comes on the mobile,” said Phoolwati, pointing to her smartphone. “If you want to learn about the best seeds to plant, you ask this thing. If you want to know how to get government money to build a toilet, you ask Google. It has all the answers in this world.” Chameli stopped to look up at Phoolwati. She raised an eyebrow theatrically, as if to ask: “Don’t you have anything better to do, woman?” Phoolwati was not deterred. “It has the Hanuman Chaleesa also, set to beautiful music,” she tried again, changing tack to matters of the divine. The tossing paused. The name of their chosen deity, the monkey-god Hanuman, made her audience sit up and take note.