Connected Life

I write this post sitting in an air-conditioned compartment of home-bound train. It was really cold last night, when I boarded the train at 10.50 PM from Hazrat Nizamuddin station, Delhi. Though the 'scheduled departure' promise was well kept; the next morning came with an unpleasant but not-so-unexpected surprise. In its 8 hour journey till morning, the train only managed to inch till Agra station. We are running eight and a half hours behind schedule. The authorities blame the envelope of thick fog/smog around Delhi for the delay. I hear many other trains delayed and a couple cancelled as the estimated delay crossed a whopping 20 hours.
While I am enjoying the warm environment of the berth and reading away "Fooled by randomness" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb; I cant ignore the noticeable trends all around me. Here is a glimpse of what I see:

Everyone around me is equipped with at least one kind of electronic media device. Mobile phones are way too common to be mentioned. I am talking about multimedia phones (those which double and treble up as music and video players); iPods/vPods, laptops etc. While the delay in the schedule bothered everyone in the morning; almost all of them have submitted to their media devices for solace and 'time pass' (I am no exception! I have closed the book and am surfing on my laptop).

Another important feature which cant be neglected is, the variety of local content created, adored and saved on contemporary media. I have a hard time switching focus between Telugu movie songs, ringtones made out of hit Hindi numbers and voice over of Jim Carrey's mask in PUNJABI!!! The coupé next to mine has a small open screening of The Mask for passer-bys!

Another emerging trend is more related to service design than social habits. Last night, when I was unsure about this train's departure time; I called Just Dial services for an enquiry number. I received an SMS from them stating that I can use SMS feature to know about my train's timings. I did it; in fact am still doing it right now to keep checking if the train has any intention of making-up for the lost time or is the fog in Delhi still affecting our driver's range of vision...
On the same lines, I observed something new during this journey. A hawker distributed food menus in our bogie saying that we can call the number and order food, which will reach our berths on the next big station (a good 2 hours away).
I found it interesting as it is based on one core assumption (which is now an observable fact) that majority of people own mobile phones. Other obvious facts driving the service would be derivative ones like, people must be bored of the limited IRCTC palette, good food can demand good price etc etc. I have ordered a chicken burger with potato chips and a black forest (yum!(

This is the first time I am traveling with mobile internet service (TATA Photon+) and it has not let me down till now.

Signing off for now
Dakshin Express (2722)
B1/0039
Somewhere between Vidisha and Bhopal (MP)