The advent of cell phone novels

Cell phones have become  multi-purpose household articles since their utility is increasingly on the high, for speaking, chatting, for sending messages, as a camera, as a store house of  a number of valuable information, to download tones, pictures, as an FM radio, as a medium for advertisement and so on.

Of late, cell phones have become latest form of entertainment, in providing novels for readers, through their screens. The idea of providing novels through cell phones was first developed in Japan, five of the first ten best selling novels in Japan last year happen to be  cell phone novels and they can be downloaded on any Java enabled cell phone.

This idea of cell phone novel picked up after the first cell phone novel ‘Deep Love’ was authored and released by a youngster named ‘Yoshi’, slowly found its way into countries like, China, Korea and Switzerland.

 India has also picked up this idea and contributed to the growing literary genre.In 2004, an English SMS novel called cloak room was attempted by an individual with a pen name Ro Gue, but did not last long after 16 episodes. Then in the year 2006, P.R.Harikumar, a Malayalam lecturer from a college, at Kaladi in Kerala became the author of  India’s first officially released cell phone novel,’Neelakannukal’(Blue Eyes).Earlier he had come up with mobile editions of Thirukkural in Tamil and Adyatama Ramayanam in Malayalam.His novel has been downloaded more than 10,000 times at an average of 25 per day.

As told by Hari Kumar, with the passage of time, literature also needs a new medium and owing to the hectic lifestyles of people these days, it requires a lot more effort to be able to read through a book, enjoy it and finish it. For a generation that is brought up on iPods and cell phones, it is the readily available and easy medium in short spells of time.He differs with the trend of modern generation of writing a novel in episodic form but to prefer to write a full fledged novel that can be readable in an hour and a half, of about 40 regular pages. Though writing a lengthy novel is difficult in the case of a cell phone novel, but one should not resort to using abbreviations in the novel.

Though cell phone novel is a sign of modern times, it does not mean that it would do away with pen and paper nor it would replace classics. Cell phone novel is just like an internet novel, an online writing stuff. And it will co-exist with other forms of writings which are in practice today. Above all cell phone novel is just a pastime and there is no scope for any innovation, stimulating thought etc.