India, Sept. 21 -- Every festive season, our dependence on the digital life looks to be becoming bigger, bolder, battier. For better or for Twitterverse. Till last season, when festival gifts and goodies had to be sent to a childhood friend in a remote town of Punjab, it heralded much hyperventilating. How to ensure fast and furious instant delivery to back-of-beyond destination Umarpura, that was the million-dollar dilemma. Swiggy & Co didn't yet serve there. Big Basket, Zepto & Co hadn't yet cast their footfalls there. The options were painfully poor. Amazon, Flipkart et al were the only recourse, but they came with time lags and location snags. This festive season the tide turned. For this sleepy small town and perhaps for others. Just for a lark, while sending festival gifts to other places, the address in this obscure Punjab town was testily fed on to the instant delivery app. Voila! The map on the app did snap up the address. Affirmation also landed from the friends in the sleepy but significant town that they too now figured on the instant delivery radar. Affirmation indeed of the deepening dependence on digital existence. Affirmation also that the cosmos conspired too to propel this historical town on to the radar of the expanding consumerist narrative. It had to be, since the town happens to be the sasural of Guru Nanak Ji. The curious case of Blinkit in Batala! Come Navratri and it also heralds new templates driving the consumerist blitzkrieg. The marketing ads mirror the paradigm shifts in how we now celebrate our festivals. Matching and manifesting the mood of Durga Pujo and Navratri, there have been women empowerment templates. From the #DuggaDugga ad of cosmetic brand Pond's that had saluted women sculptors doing Durga idols to the #RevolutioNaaris template of matrimony portal shaadi.com that had toasted the grit of ordinary womanhood. Talking of the expanding dominance of doorstep delivery, the previous Navratri season saw an interesting advertising narrative that truly tickled with its humour quotient. This ad by delivery provider Swiggy Instamart starred Dandia Queen Falguni Pathak. It tongue-in-cheek cashed in on Falguni's near-invisibility through the year and overnight appearance only during dandiya nights. Pegged on the instant doorstep delivery of dandiya accessories, even to an "invisible' Falguni, such consumerist narratives indeed mirror our festivals' new realities and deepening dependence on digital life. The invisible is the new visible. There was a time when it was the nukkad kinari or kiryana store, the neighbourhood Lalaji who lorded over the Navratri knick-knacks. From dandia sticks to chaniya cholis. What with the choicest cholis coming home now on Myntra, Nykaa & Co, the festival arrives all dressed up at our doorstep. A telling comment from a compulsive Durga Pujo shopaholic friend in faraway Kolkata defines the digital-age shifts. "Why risk the mad traffic snarls and chaotic crowds of Navratri season, when the Pujo shopping bag knocks at your door!" A mirror to the mood of the moment, a lens to the newer Navratri narratives. The curious case of "The Summer I Turned Pujo Pretty"....