Usage of internet has become part of daily routine. Most of our requirements are net based. From petrol to shopping, a lot is based on internet.

People whose work is entirely based on net suffered the most during these net-less days. With internet being ‘grounded’(that’s how they referred to it) for certain reasons in Udaipur city, some people could manage for a day, but by the end of the day the itching began. Since we are too used to being on the face book catching up with updates in each others’ life, a day without it was ok but checking the mobile for internet signals by evening constantly resulted in a frustrated face and became the story of the day. This continued and everyone got irritated since a lot was getting disturbed due to addiction for the net.

Shopping through plastic money did happen in some places and even ATM services were on, but fingers itched a lot. Everyone wanted internet on their mobile phones, everyone wanted their WiFi systems to get alive.

I did get a chance to speak to a travel agent friend of mine for whom it was a real tough time. He went up and down Nathdwara and Kankroli to connect with his clients as these places had net going on uninterrupted. For 2 days, he went twice to each place just to check his clients’ confirmations and the responses of airlines and hotels for them. As per his report, he took a long time standing in queue at the railway station to get railway bookings done for the clients since every railway booking agent was also helpless in the ongoing situation.

For some of the hoteliers, it was a damn tough task since they had to stay connected over phone for longer hours for the clients’ confirmations for room bookings and for passing on the same to the other agents in other cities. Some even suffered a loss since they couldn’t check and respond to the mails on time. Most of these hoteliers operate through sites like makemytrip, tripadvisor, cleartrip etc.

Other basic necessity merchants in town had to open a new credit register for people who used to pay either by PayTM or credit/debit cards. Now that everybody has become used to cashless transactions, grounded internet posed a sky full of troubles. Those who recharge their mobile packs online at home had to run here and there late night to find out if any recharge outlet was open.

Petrol pumps also saw a lot of chaos. With less cash in hand, consumers had to rush to ATM for withdrawing money before feeding the tanks with fuel. Since card swiping was not possible, most of the transactions were done in cash. PayTM transactions were obviously out of question.