Mission Delhi - Vijay Kumar, Kamla Nehru Park, Gurgaon

Mission Delhi – Vijay Kumar, Kamla Nehru Park, Gurgaon

Mission Delhi - Vijay Kumar, Kamla Nehru Park, Gurgaon

One of the one percent in 13 million.

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

An amazing sight this afternoon. He is the only person in the public garden without a mobile in his hand. Otherwise every single person in Gurugram’s Kamla Nehru Park, here in the Greater Delhi Region, is busy having a rendezvous with the phone, even when they are not alone. Including the namkeen seller, and the bunch of men playing cards on the grass.

“I don’t use mobile much,” explains Vijay Kumar. The phone is in his pants pocket.

So what on earth does he do when he has nothing to do?

“Right now I was thinking.”

A cook in Harish Bakery near Sohna Chowk, Mr Kumar comes daily to this park to while away his three-hour-long break shift.

“I’m worried for my wife.” Pushpa Devi is seven-month pregnant. This will be the couple’s third child. “I hope she doesn’t fall ill; so far all is going well.”

The soft-spoken cook then regrets his inability to cherish the moment as it is. “You are troubled when things are not going well. And when things are going well, you are worried what if something happens and the happy spell is broken.”

Then there is the matter of his children. “My younger son is not focusing on his studies.”

Can more screen time with the mobile keep him off his persistent anxieties?

Mr Kumar smiles, shaking his head. “I use my phone only when I get a call.”

He now slowly walks away along the jogging track, with hands free of phone.

[This is the 248th portrait of Mission Delhi project]

A portrait of the mobile-less

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Mission Delhi - Vijay Kumar, Kamla Nehru Park, Gurgaon

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Mission Delhi - Vijay Kumar, Kamla Nehru Park, Gurgaon

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Mission Delhi - Vijay Kumar, Kamla Nehru Park, Gurgaon