On screens, swatches and the old habit of feeling cloth between your fingers

You can buy almost anything with a thumb now. Phones, furniture, groceries, even gold. You scroll, you tap, it arrives. And yet, every wedding season in Delhi, the fabric markets fill up with families who have travelled across the city to stand at a counter and feel cloth.

I’ve spent a lot of time around those counters, and I’ve stopped thinking of it as an old habit that technology hasn’t caught up with yet. I