I'm going off the grid" people write on social media sometimes, to say they won't be in a mobile network zone for some time, or not on social media perhaps. The grid, which knots and crosses time and place. "Come back soon, Paromita!" says my friend when we are talking online from two different countries, neither of them India. "You are too far away!" Place shouldn't, often doesn't, matter when you are mostly connecting with people online. Emotions which link us, become a place to live in online. But time is more slippery.

Illustration/Ravi Jadhav