The Digital Divide

A New Silence Inside Punjabi Homes

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It doesn't begin with a fight. It begins with a silence. A father at the head of the dining table, eyes on a news clip; a mother half-listening to her child's story while scrolling through WhatsApp; a teenager laughing at something on a screen no one else can see. They are all together - but not quite. The same ‘roti’ (food), the same ‘chhat’(roof), the same WiFi.

In many Punjabi homes, that silence has become familiar - not the heavy kind of old quarrels, but the thin, invisible quiet of constant partial attention. Once, the dinner table was where the day unfolded in full sentences: who came to the fields, who brought the news, who failed a test. Now, the talk breaks into fragments between notifications.

Parents sense it but can't name it. They remember landlines and postcards, letters from relatives in Canada, the thrill of hearing a voice after months. Their children live in another rhythm - emojis instead of explanations, videos instead of visits. The divide isn't of wealth or access anymore; it's of attention and language.

In one household, the father, a small trader, proudly tells guests that he's learned to check market prices on Google. His daughter rolls her eyes: "He never looks up when I talk.” He's not careless; he's excited to belong to the digital world he once feared. She's not rude; she just misses being heard without having to compete with a screen.In another household, a mother sighs that her teenage son no longer joins dinner because he's "in the middle of a raid" - some game that has its own rules and gods. "He eats,” she says, "but we don't eat together anymore.” Behind that sigh lies something deeper - the guilt of knowing she too checks messages when he talks.