Mobile Stories

This is a summary of the stories collected during a collaboration with young women in a slum of Delhi through storytelling. Through this exercise they become self aware and confident.

When we walk around our neighborhood with our mobile phones, people give all kinds of comments, such as shiny box, you think you are really smart... We usually get the old, retired phones, whereas our brothers get the newest, latest models. We learn from our surroundings, through trial & error, from our brothers. If we have a mobile phone, we call in case of emergency, we listen to music and we dance to it, we record videos and take photos of ourselves and friends, we talk to our far away relatives, but most of all we stay in touch with our boyfriends. We find secret spaces in order to talk with our friends, we hide under our blankets, we call in the bathroom with the tap running, we keep our mobile phones in our secret pockets or wrap it in our dupatta (long scarf). We share our mobile phones with our friends, so that we can be in touch with our boyfriends in turn. A mobile phone is for safety, and useful for emergencies, but it can cause fights too. It brings bad news and it brings good news.

Lipika Bansal