Tired of screens and notifications, a new wave of people are choosing to go old-school — swapping smart watches for analogue ones, mobile phones for cameras, and phone galleries for photo albums
Conrad Fisher from The Summer I Turned Pretty is seen sporting an analogue watch. PIC/X@BELLYCONRADPR
The smartphone arrived with a bold promise: It would be everything. A camera, a map, a clock, a calculator, a music player — packed neatly into the palm of your hand. For years, it delivered on that promise, wrapping convenience so tightly around our lives that we barely noticed how much we came to depend on it. But that dominance is beginning to crack. Tired of endless scrolling and digital overload, a growing number of people are turning away from screens and reaching back for the analogue. Point-and-shoot cameras instead of phones, wristwatches instead of wearables, business cards instead of QR codes — what was once left behind is suddenly the new way forward.
Oorja Khetrapal likes to make photo albums “like the ones our parents made”. PIC/NISHAD ALAM
Oorja Khetarpal, 22, is going “old school” with photo albums — she is making physical ones “like the ones our parents made”, she says. A big traveller, she makes these albums as a keepsake of the trip. Instead of Snapchat memories or “1 year ago today” photo compilations, she chooses to go through these albums to remember those precious moments, even customising each album for each travel partner she gives it to. “I sprinkle them with small notes or inside jokes we made on the trip. Each one becomes a core memory.”
Her friends, too, recognise her passion for creating these notebooks. For her birthday, a friend spoke to Khetarpal in her own love language, making her a notebook chronicling all her favourite memories of her 20 years. She called it “a memoir for my best friend on turning 20”. “It feeds that sense of curiosity I have,” she says. She sees a sense of analogue in many of her other hobbies as well. “I love point-and-shoot cameras, even polaroid cameras. Something about knowing that you only have a limited number of takes really helps you stay in the moment. Then, taking a picture is just about capturing a memory, not about getting the perfect angle.”
Khetarpal’s friend made a physical book for her as a birthday gift
An important landmark of stepping into adulthood used to be getting your own business cards. For most youngsters entering the workspace though, this milestone is never reached since visiting cards have gone out of fashion. Twenty-something-years-old influencer and model Mishall B is bringing the practice back though, calling it “such a chic way to exchange contact info”. Inspired by another influencer friend of his, Anushka (@anushcache), Mishall says, “I customised it to show my personality, it has all my catchphrases on it like ‘Let’s try everything’,” which is a phrase he uses in all his videos.
“I grew up in a family where I had monogrammed notecards. Personalisation was very important to me,” he says. “I find old technology to be very cool. I use film cameras, wired headphones, all those things.” But is this just a passing fascination? “Well, they have been saying film cameras are over for the last 10 years and people are still buying them,” he retorts.
Mishall added his most used catchphrases on his business card
When you’re networking, the most important thing to do is stand out. In the clutter of people we meet every day, for Mishall, “In a world where everyone is exchanging a million Instagram handles every day, it gets so hard to remember anyone. So, giving a business card to someone has an immediate impact.” Saajan Jain, 35, on the other hand is tired of the amount of devices we need even just for everyday functioning. “I’ve ruled out wireless headphones, electric toothbrushes, even halved reading on a Kindle. It seems like there are about a 1000 devices you have to charge every day.”
Saajan Jain has decided to stick to basics, especially proud of his CASIO AQ-800E-1A watch. PIC/SATEJ SHINDE
Most notably, despite being a marathon runner, Jain never switched to smart watches. “It’s yet another screen then. Then you get all those same notifications, calls on your watch also. It’s such a distraction.” A smart watch, however, can be helpful to athletes in getting health metrics. “Instead of measuring heart rate and calories, I would measure how many kilometres I ran for in how many minutes,” he explains. “If I had to, then I would just buy a Whoop band, but that is again another device to charge.”
Analogue watches are experiencing a kind of comeback in the zeitgeist, especially popularised by Conrad Fisher from The Summer I Turned Pretty. He is seen sporting a vintage tan leather band Omega Constellation throughout the show. The watch somehow adds to his old-school yearner-boy charm, further proving the fashion-aesthetic value of an analogue watch. Similar fame has been bestowed on the Casio D011 A-158WA-1Q, a watch many of us may have seen our parents wear. Closer to home, HMT watches have also seen a revival in the recent past, especially the Janata watch, which shows time in the Devanagri script. All these watches have one thing in common — instead of showing your heart rate, they show others your personality, making them timeless classics.
The Casio D011 A-158WA-1Q. PIC/ISTOCK
Jain works at his own digital marketing agency called Growthpep, which means a 24x7 exposure to screens. He grew tired of having to keep up with so many screens which are bombarding notifications at him all the time. The deeper one goes into creating tech ecosystems, the more stimulated you can feel. For example, if you owned the entire Apple suite, your iPhone, MacBook, iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods, all your devices would alert you of a phone call at the same time, leaving users overstimulated. Jain has decided to stick to basics, especially proud of his Casio AQ-800E-1A watch. “I get so many compliments on it,” he says. “Even in terms of aesthetic look, I much prefer my own watch.”
Mishall is an enthusiast of vintage technologies. PIC/INSTAGRAM@MISHALLB
For Prisha Chhabra, her point-and-shoot camera is her most cherished possession. At 21, she just graduated from college, and for her yearbook picture, she chose to pose with this treasured belonging. “It actually belongs to my dad. This is my jayedad [inheritance],” she jokes. “I feel the pictures I take on them are like the pictures you would see in those photo albums your parents show you. It’s the kind of pictures I would want to pass down to my children. I wouldn’t show them my selfies na!” she laughs.
Chhabra feels even if we take out the nostalgia from these cameras, even just the quality of the photo makes the pictures better. “They’re a little blurry, somewhat scratchy. The quality is really low. But somehow, they capture a moment better than a phone.” She even started a challenge last year in October to click one picture everyday with her camera. “It made me get off my phone. If I was hanging out with my friends, I could capture that moment without needing my phone,” she says. “The camera also feels way more communal. Anyone of my friends can pick it up and take a photo. The next day I get to discover all these new photos that I didn’t know were taken. You can’t do that with a phone.”
Prisha Chhabra carried a point-and-shoot camera to her yearbook photoshoot
As technology evolves, we consistently get new feature we never knew we needed. But according to Chhabra, innovation has gone too far. “There are some updates that are just unnecessary. Like why do you need a tablet-sized screen in your car? Why can’t we just have a simple radio?” she says, getting passionate. “Every time I want to play a simple song in my car, I somehow end up turning off the AC or opening some random app. Cars don’t need apps!” she exclaims.
The downside of these innovations is also they make you inherently dependent on them. There is no choice but to use them. “Today I can’t call someone on a landline or use a physical map to navigate even if I wanted to, simply because not enough people are using them.” Staying analogue somehow ends up meaning staying stuck in the past. “What is analogue is trusted for a reason. It has worked well for so many years. If you try to fix something that isn’t broken, you end up bringing these unnecessary innovations,” says Chhabra.
For many, going analogue is a way to preserve their legacy. Khetarpal grew up with parents who were in the army. Every two years or so, she would move to a new city, to a new set of friends, to new memories. “The one constant I remember is my grandparents’ gramophone. They used to listen to records on it all the time. Somewhere along the way, it ended up breaking. So when I could, I bought one for myself. Now I listen to music on that.” Preserving dying arts is an important value for her, which is why she decided to start her own stationery brand called Daastan which mixes archival Indian prints with notebooks. For Chhabra too, her point-and-shoot camera is a piece of her father that she got to bring from her hometown to college, a souvenir from her childhood.
In a world where every problem seems to demand an app, this rebellion lies in choosing what doesn’t need fixing. Analogue objects — whether a Casio watch, a film camera, or a photobook stitched with inside jokes — offer more than just nostalgia. They strip away the noise, ground people in the present, and carry stories forward. Perhaps that is the real allure: in resisting endless updates, they find something timeless.
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