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India's love affair with hi-tech flirting
By Sultan Shahin
November 8, 2002
New Delhi - The short messaging service (SMS) used by mobile telephones is
creating a revolution in India, and among other things, it has revived the
country's famed Kama Sutra spirit of sexual freedom, long-suppressed by the
intrusion of prudish values into the country.
Indeed, within a few years of its introduction as a value-added service for
mobile phone users, SMS has in many circles come to stand for "some more sex".
Indian scholars are now studying strange new subjects such as "textual
intercourse", "hi-tech flirting", "electronic aphrodisiac", "Viagra with
buttons and a ring tone" and so on.
An estimated 25 million short messages are exchanged daily by just 400,000 SMS
users out of India's 8 million cell phone owners. This works out to an average
of over 60 messages per phone per day.
On special days such as national festivals, SMS traffic increases so much that
the networks are clogged, forcing users to stare helplessly at their mobile
phone screens that say: "Message sending failed."
This is exactly what happened on Monday, the day that India celebrated Diwali,
the beautiful festival of light, that commemorates the victory of good over
evil. SMS traffic was reported to be four times more than normal as mobile
users across the country opted to send Diwali greetings through this most
economical, convenient and instant mode of communication. The increase in
traffic spelt huge revenue for cellular operators as they charge Rs 1.50 (US
three cents) per message, but it also resulted in network clogging.
In Delhi alone, 9 million messages were sent. Hutchison and Airtel recorded
over 4.6 million and 3.4 million messages respectively on Diwali day in the
capital, as opposed to 1.1 million to 1.2 million messages on a normal day. In
Mumbai, BPL recorded 2 million outgoing messages.
Hutchison says that it recorded SMS traffic of close to 5 million during the
period. "That represents a 500 percent jump over normal usage. Compared to last
Diwali, New Year or Holi, the rush was unprecedented," said Hutchison
officials.
The problem of clogged networks was accentuated by the tardiness of users in
deleting "read" messages and in cleaning up their mail boxes. That led to a
pile up of messages at the network end.
What also contributed to the problem was that it was not just plain old "Happy
Diwali" text that the networks had to carry. With flashing messages and picture
messages with different ring tones fighting for airspace, the load on the
networks got worse. So users, for next time, were advised to do what they have
to do to beat the morning rush hour - the earlier you start, the better your
chances of getting through.
On normal days, however, there is no such problem. For tens of thousands of
upwardly mobile people it has become a new life style. The addiction is
growing.
In a cover story entitled "Love, Sex and SMS" in India's largest circulated
news magazine, India Today, Shefalee Vasudev writes, "In most cases, hi-tech
flirting - often punctuated with smileys and winking 'emoticons' - is a private
display of affection. You can hear them in pubs, meetings, seminars, fashion
shows, sit-down dinners, drawing rooms, even in bedrooms. The buzz of the SMS
has become an omnipresent, everyday rhythm, sometimes the secretive smiles
giving away the frenzied exchanges between couples even as they sit in the same
room watching a fashion show or attending a corporate conference. Some users
confess that they spend a good part of the night making SMS love.
"The amazing thing is the way SMS has charmed the number and variety of people.
From celebrities and corporate barons to politicians and professionals, SMS has
made mushy idiots out of many. It is indicative of a paradigm shift in personal
communication among Indians, for many of whom explicit talk about love and sex
is restrained by conscious cultural reminders, but continues to simmer inside."
The magazine quotes some celebrities:
""It can be great fun and surely enhances intimacy.When I get an official
message [through SMS], I do feel a little disappointed." - Chandan Mitra,
editor-in-chief, The Pioneer daily newspaper.
"Letters are outdated and phone calls can be boring. SMS is direct and
exciting." - Neena Gupta, actress.
"Infidelity was always there. SMS has just made it easier. It is natural for
many to write what they're hesitant to say. Now technology enables us to do
just that in relationships where you can't speak much." - Rupa Ganguly,
actress.
"SMS is like Viagra with buttons and a ring tone. I believe it is a very
'powerfully silent' communication tool, very personalized and almost akin to
human touch. I use it for three things primarily: work, play and foreplay. On
the foreplay front, it is great for mind games," - Suhel Seth, advertising
professional.
"Personal communication through SMS is much better than a voice mail and sure,
one cannot rule out its fun component." - Rajiv Pratap Rudy, minister of state
for commerce.
"SMS takes away the awkward blushes of picking up the phone and not knowing
what to say," - SMS freak and actor, Parveen Dabas, of Monsoon Wedding fame.
"The ultimate four-letter word is 'talk'. Talk is a potent foreplay and
unfortunately it doesn't happen much in Indian bedrooms. There is no doubt that
if a man and woman exchange 50 SMS messages in an hour's time, it has more to
do with sexual intent than just flirtation." - Dr Prakash Kothari, India's
best-known sexologist.
"Culturally, Indians find verbal expression difficult. SMS is perfect. It is
direct but avoids face to face contact. However, people wrongly perceive
intensity in passion as depth in a relationship." - Rita Marathey,
communications expert.
SMS addiction is no doubt a world-wide phenomenon. A recent survey by UK-based
TV station The Dating Channel found that some people would rather give up
chocolate and TV than lose the SMS facility. But in India it has opened the
floodgates of love and lust. It has provided a perfect medium of expression,
and an intensely private one at that, for the bashful, repressed, inhibited
Indian, particularly the woman.
"It really is a woman's medium," says Vir Sanghvi, editor-in-chief of The
Hindustan Times, who feels that SMS has empowered a lot of women to be original
when sending text about love and romance, something about which they would
otherwise be shy.
Writer Anil Dharker agrees. "Dirty jokes used to be such a male thing," he
says. "But dirty SMS jokes as a form of women's empowerment will make a minor
footnote in the history of the women's liberation movement."
Statistics support these observations. A study done by the International Data
Corporation in India found that women use SMS more frequently than men. One
factor perhaps is the room for innovation in using abbreviations, the so-called
'texting'. SMS junkies consider this fun. It provides an outlet for their
creativity. So much so that some girls say that they would leave their current
partners if they found another person who was better at SMS, that is, if he
could devise better, more imaginative texts.
"Texting provided a lifeline," says Vasudev. "With 75 percent of people using
the technology to flirt and 25 percent claiming it made them feel more
confident and witty. SMS works as a tool for verbal foreplay because it can be
graphic and imaginative. Moreover, there are no rules to this infectious
evolving language of phonetic abbreviations."
In an article titled "r u hookd?", K Sunil Thomas illustrates this point: "Its
shrt'n'swt, its gr8 fun, & evn bd splng wrks! If you are able to read
through that sentence without blinking, then you are one of the millions across
India who are avid fans of SMS, that natty feature on your mobile phone which
lets you keep in touch with anyone around the world for almost nothing."
Love and lust have always had powerful advocates and equally powerful enemies.
In the case of SMS love, the greatest enemy can be your spouse, if any. SMS has
made it possible for married couples to send love messages to third partners
while in the company of their spouses. This is generating a lot of mistrust and
snooping around.
Mobile service providers say that husbands are increasingly demanding printouts
of their wives' SMS records. But this is not as easy as in the case of normal
mobile calls. As the networks can spare only limited lines for SMS and the
traffic is heavy, it is possible to get records of messages sent only a couple
of hours earlier. Thus, the frenzy of "textual intercourse" can go on for some
more time until technology devises newer methods of snooping and making SMS as
risky as mobile phone communication itself.
Jealous spouses are not the only ones to ask for monitoring, however. They have
powerful collaborators in the intelligence agencies. Unfortunately, the
signature tune of contemporary life is not love, even lust: it is terrorism.
Terrorism, or freedom struggle, as some put it, plants its shadow everywhere. A
powerful and very private communication tool like SMS cannot be immune from it.
Terrorists can use it. So the governments have to intervene.
"There is no technology to trace an SMS," says a telecom official.
Acknowledging this, the police hope that technology moves fast enough so that
messages can be intercepted in the same easy manner in which voice calls can be
overheard. In the past few months, the police feared that Kashmiri militants
were using SMS channels, even though mobile phones do not work in the state of
Jammu and Kashmir.
The government of India has asked cell phone operators to put in place SMS
interception technology to facilitate monitoring. But this can be done only on
the directive of the home secretary (or an officer designated by him) or a
state's chief secretary. Once an alert is issued, the operator can keep records
of all messages sent and received on a number. Ordinarily, operators do not
keep the contents of an SMS once it is sent. Only the number to which the
message is sent is recorded.
When the government intervenes and the police want to monitor a technology,
courts cannot be far away. Says telecom lawyer Ramji Srinivasan, "If a court
asks for the reproduction of a text message, the mobile service providers will
have to submit it."
Lawyers have raised the next logical question: Is SMS a legal document? The
Information Technology Act, 2000, makes any record sent in electronic form
admissible evidence in a court of law. Electronic record is defined as "data,
record or data generated, image or sound stored, received or sent in an
electronic form or microfilm or computer-generated micro fiche". Electronic
form is defined as "any information generated, sent, received or stored in
media, magnetic, optical, computer memory, microfilm, computer generated micro
fiche or similar device". An SMS sent from a mobile is accepted as "electronic
record" transmitted in "electronic form". Whether it is authentic or not will
be subject to the usual tests under the general rules of evidence.
One problem for the courts, however, will remain - unraveling the SMS language
and translating it to a normal language. The accuracy or otherwise of
translations, too, will provide the lawyers with the opportunity to drag out
cases for years.
Sample some of the SMS messages collected by India Today, and if you can write
as well in this language, you may have good prospects in India's SMS love
industry:
"My mst ergnus zones are a cktail of d snsory & d tactile: d brsh of lips
over lng, wet folds, deep prbing xtasies & silences."
"If i tell u tht u hv a beutful bdy, wl u hld it agnst me? Thr r so mny rsons
to yearn for u. Luv is jst 1 of thm."
"Lst nite dnces b4 my eys. Whn cn we tango agn? I wnt 2 awkn desirs tht u dnt
knw exst."
Poets are not the only people to despair of their trade, with every Tom, Dick
and Harry trying his hand at poetry in the new SMS language. There are others.
The traditional greeting cards industry, for instance.
Every Valentine's Day, the $62 million greetings card industry enjoys a boom as
cards with Cupid, hearts and messages of love make brisk sales. This year,
however, industry observers felt that the seductive power of paper cards may
not work because of the SMS rage. This has made the cards industry, already
reeling from the growing use of e-cards, wake up to the threat posed by SMS.
According to industry officials, Christmas, New Year's Day and Valentine's Day
card sales account for over 30 percent of the industry's annual sales. "One
year ago, it was e-cards that created a major impact on the greeting cards
industry. Now, youth are increasingly turning toward SMS," said Vijayant
Chhabra, director (marketing) of Archies Greetings and Gifts Ltd. "While it is
too early to judge the likely impact of SMS on this year's Valentine's Day, we
hope that customers use SMS as a supplement to cards and not as a mode of
communication in itself," he told Indo-Asian News Service.
Archies, which has a 40 percent market share in the cards industry, has seen
its net profit tumble in the last few quarters. The company reported a net
profit of Rs 35 million in the quarter ended December 2001, down from Rs 45
million a year ago. The greetings card industry has also been affected by the
severe economic downturn, with some companies saying business is down by 50
percent. Analysts say that SMS, on the other hand, is experiencing rapid growth
because of the low cost of messaging, its ease of use in noisy environments,
unobtrusive communication during meetings and roaming agreements across
nations.
"The main reason why mobile phone users are adapting to the messaging culture
is cost. A simple paper greeting card is 10 times the price of an SMS message,"
said an industry analyst with a management consultancy firm. "The cost and
speed of the service are turning people away from the plain old greeting cards.
We have seen that recently during Diwali and New Year's Day."
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