a strange encounter

i had gone to le marche in vasant vihar (a supermarket where the clientele is often the embassy crowd of expats and their friends) the other day. just wanted to pick up 2-3 things while i waited for my fried chicken at the korean place nearby. many of these supermarkets these years have more aisle-help than one needs, and they make themselves obvious, "Ma'am do you need any help" or some such. there was this young girl who asked me that and because I couldn't find where the garbage bags were I did ask her. now I know the sizes of the bins at home in inches, or actually the sizes of the bags i usually buy. but this place had all garbage bags sized up in cms. i couldnt remember the conversion from cms to inches. and i wasn't carrying my phone cos i often leave it at home now to save up on sanitizing it after public exposure. so i asked the young girl if she could please tell me how many cms were an inch. i think i said it in hindi cos i do know a lot of the help around are not fluent in english. she asked me in turn what the size of my bin was. i do get annoyed when ppl answer a request or a question with another one, so i was already beginning to lose my patience but i told her that i knew the size in inches but not in cms so could she please translate for me as i wasn't carrying my phone on me. she said she didnt know. i asked her if she had her phone as i wasn't carrying mine; she took one out of her pocket; i told her she could look it up on her phone. she opened her calculator app and said she couldnt see how. i suggested gently that she should open up a browser and search on google. i had to somehow say it more than once explaining that a lil bit. the trusted google blank page came alight, and she didn't know what to do after that. i was trying not to show my surprise/shock on my face, and i just tried to lead her to clicking on the search bar and asked her to type "inch to cms". she even missed the lil virtual keypad that appeared and didn't seem to know what to do with it. because of covid and keeping my hands off her phone i simply tried to point out to the keypad and asked her to click on i-n-ch . she got the i, but no more beyond. even after 3-4 attempts. i realised not only did she not know that she carried a trove of information in her pocket and did not know how to access it, she was also unaware of the english alphabet. what surprised me then that she wasn't using the phone in hindi. i kept my mouth shut though and simply gave up at that point. i just picked up a medium sized pack of bags and told her it was fine, and thanked her. i came home and told hubby, told my mom and sis the day after, and have been thinking about it since. all those statistics that count and estimate the spread of smartphones and internet access in developing countries and use them to imply how these devices empower people's lives, etc. etc. and this was not an old person who had missed the internet revolution and could never seem to catch up with it. this was a girl of probably 18-20 years of age, belonging to a generation of people who use smart devices like physical appendages to their bodies. yes, i understand she probably didn't know english, she probably didn't have much education, that it was probably a new phone too that she had just been able to afford. but it was right in her pocket, it was a not-cheap smartphone, right in her pocket, and she worked in a store where she would probably see and hear and learn a lot about how things and people commmunicate. i was stunned. i still am despite the fact that i sort of know that india is a country where paradoxes are abundant and where dichotomies often do overlap. i was stunned at what i saw and understood to be the relationship between the young girl and her phone, probably that of dialing numbers and calling and receiving calls in turn, and maybe adding/subtracting amounts of money on the calculator. i was stunned at me being stunned. i mean this is my country and what do i know about it. what do i know about its people, my people? i could have been that girl, if i was born in different circumstances; could i really? there was a time when i remember marveling at someone's typing speed in college (Masters years!) when all i could do was use my two pointer fingers to click on one letter after another much much more slowly (now i do use multiple fingers to type much faster or i wouldn't be writing all this down). maybe that strange encounter will help her question what her phone is capable of, maybe she will sit down with it after dinner that day or with some friend and ask/explore how she can interact with it. maybe next time i won't be so surprised, and maybe i will actually try to teach her something. and maybe i've actually learned something from it already.