When words can’t say it all

A picture is worth a thousand words, they say. Is this becoming increasingly true of emoticons and sticker apps? I often find myself using them, combining them with words. Sometimes just the stickers seem to do. Is this a boon or a bane?

Chennai

Subha, we as humans are essentially visually-led. The visual is natural, just as the written and font-led is unnatural. To that extent, visual messaging is the best, as it conveys and speaks a universally understood language. Usage of emoticons, even complex ones that leave you scratching your head for hours to understand what they meant, are much richer than using just text.

The younger you are and the younger you get, the more comfortable you are with language that is so paraphrased into visual emoticons. In the beginning we wrote long text on mobile phones when we sent SMS messages out. Then came SMS text, which was all about shortening the long words, never mind the spellings gone haywire. Even brand Reebok bought into this when it named its brand for the new era as Rbk. And finally has come the era of the emoticon with text. The future, by that trend, is all about the emoticon alone. Maybe a string of emoticons that tell a whole story quite easily. Hieroglyphics of a new era, really. We have come a full circle, Subha.

I am grappling with definitions of rural India. How do you define it?

Hyderabad

Bala, rural is difficult to define and constrict within a definition anymore. The whole market is getting very amorphous in nature, thanks to the advent and percolation of television and more so due to the arrival, growth and aggression of the mobile handset all across market spaces. These two devices have ironed out and are continuously removing the creases of the rural market as contrasted to the urban one.

Typically, from an Indian census point of view, rural has been defined with a “deprivation” orientation, rural being a landmass without access to continuous electricity, water, the stock market, and other facilities.

However, marketers today define rural as a more vibrant mass of people living a different lifestyle as opposed to those who have settled in the bigger towns and cities.

Rural is defined as pastoral in nature and as a mass of people who relate their income closely with the lands they till or use to raise their cattle and livestock.

I personally define rural differently. I do believe rural is a mindset. Those who possess it are rural and those who do not, are urban,

To that extent, in Bangalore city itself, just off the old airport road, are a whole set of people who live farming their lands. If you visit their homes, their lifestyles are totally rural. They do not have access to continuous electricity and water, even.

Similarly, there are people who live in the villages of our country who have access to the best of it all. These are urban folk.

Rural is not a region. It is a mindset.

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