Like Peter, wishing you and yours a very Happy Diwali and Eid Mubarak. It is a long weekend here .. everything's closed until Wednesday which is Eid.  Am off to Khandala for a quiet break.  Diwali for us is a small puja on Dhanteras at home, lighting a few diyas, hanging a garland outside our door and distributing sweets and gifts to our close family members.  Then ... a mad dash out of town for a quiet getaway.

It has been quite quiet this Diwali in Mumbai.  When I was growing up, there would be firecrackers .. the noisier the better for those indulging in a vulgar display of burning wealth... all through the week running up to Diwali.  Tadafadis - those long strips of really annoying and noisy bombs would be lined up on the roads and go off for 10 minutes continuously .. this would go on all evening and night.  The next morning, the roads were littered with varied debris.

On the other hand, traffic this week has been just crazy,  and the shops really full.  Interestingly, online shopping has grown 100% over last year, this Diwali. 

9:16:27 AM    comment []  trackback []

"A new report from the firm says the portion of low-cost handsets with basic cameras is high enough that, during the next 10 years, "hundreds of millions" of Chinese and Indians not only will have their first phone experience via a wireless handset, but also their first camera experience." TelecomWeb.

This is so true .. it is amazing how often you see youngsters particularly taking quick pictures with their cam phones and sending them to friends via SMS and bluetooth. Stuart, in a series of observations on India, shares his experiences observing camera phone usage in India:

"Now imagine a world where no one growing up had a camera. Where photos were taken at a wedding, relegated to studio shots for the rich, or Bollywood snaps appearing in the press. In a gross generalization, photography in India was 50 or 60 years behind the rest of the world until the mobile phone arrived."

"....Each time I frequent one I'm always seeing people taking pictures. They pass the phone around. They take them with each other's phones. They display a real delight of just discovering photography and they just keep on snapping. Camera phones will impact society differently here. There was no progression from a camera. The mobile phone for many, is their first camera. They never learned to shoot with film or the constraints and expense of film. They never looked through a viewfinder. Photography for them starts on a device that is better at shorter distances. They are learning photography in a digital age. As a result India is about to experience an outpouring of imagery."

Tags: camera phones, india, mobile phones

7:54:42 AM    comment []  trackback []