Our 1998 cover on the spread of cell phones

After the personal computer I believe the mobile phone is the next great invention of the late 20th century. For those who own one, and their numbers are growing exponentially, it has changed the way they live. With its multimedia capability, the cell phone could lead to more convergence than any other gadget.

Indians, always avid talkers, have taken to the mobile phone with enthusiasm. More than just talking, which is still relatively expensive, Indians have discovered a new way to communicate on their cell phones—the SMS or short messaging service.

SMS has changed the way people talk to one another and, we believe, even socialise. India has eight million mobile-phone users who send 25 million SMS messages every day, among one of the highest rates of text messaging in the world. Cell phone operators collect revenues of Rs 300 crore per year through SMS. That figure is growing by an astonishing 10 per cent every month because Indians are discovering the benefits of a medium that is faster than e-mail, just as personal and yet anonymous enough.

Sociologists believe urban Indians have discovered that SMS helps them abandon personal inhibition when it comes to courtship, romance or sex. Surprisingly we discovered that most manic SMS users are not giddy-headed teenagers but the middle-aged who find SMS the best way of conducting romance, whether inside or outside their current relationships. The messages are often lewd, graphic and unprintable. There are even instances of SMS leading to marital tension. The rules of courtship have changed and the days of coyness are over.

Service providers have quickly tapped into the new mood: chat rooms and dating rooms have been set up over the mobile networks and multi-media messaging is the next logical step. We decided to take a closer look at this phenomenon of SMS with a special focus on how it is increasingly used for romance.

Special Correspondent Shefalee Vasudev, who has written several stories on human relationships, put together this story with inputs from countrywide bureaus. She says, "SMS seems to work in repressed societies like ours because it is subliminal sex."

Njy rdng abt d nw lngo of luv & oftn lst.

(Aroon Purie)