HELLO, FUTURE

Once that first mobile call was made—and the enter button pressed on the first internet search—there was no looking back for India

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Two teenagers jabbering away in gaming parlance? Er, not exactly.... This is India. So the honour was reserved for the other end of the age/ social spectrum. But fate chose an unlikely duo all the same. It was July 1995 when Jyoti Basu, then a sprightly 84, rang Union telecom minister Sukh Ram, years younger but no spring chicken himself. The Marxist chief minister of West Bengal, sitting in Kolkata and using a Nokia handset on the Modi Telstra network, had just made India's very first mobile telephone call.