SARATH CHNADRANNew Delhi, Jan. 1 -- Columnist Santosh Desai, in his latest book "Memes for Mummyji", offers a sharp yet affectionate portrait of an India quietly transformed by the smartphone. This is not a book obsessed with screens, apps, or algorithms.
Instead, Desai uses the mobile phone as a narrative doorway into the deeper patterns of Indian life-our families, aspirations, anxieties, and the invisible rules that govern how we behave, online and offline.
Written as a series of essays, the book reads like a long conversation with a keen observer who notices what most of us overlook. Desai suggests that smartphones did not radically change Indian society; they simply amplified its existing instincts. The digital world, he argues, is n...