e Magus

There was a time when opinion was formed in public spaces. The village square, the tea shop, the office water-cooler, or the pubs (pub is actually a short form for ‘public house’)—these were places where ideas were exchanged, debated, often loudly. Today, our new square is a green-and-white screen. WhatsApp has become the digital equivalent of the chowk, but with one key difference: it is quieter, more efficient, and infinitely more manipulative. In its early years, WhatsApp was just an SMS that didn’t cost money. We sent festival greetings, birthday wishes, and bad jokes accompanied by even worse clipart. But somewhere along the way, it became more than a messenger — it became a mechanism. A space where information was not just shared, but shaped. Consider the resident WhatsApp group — an invention that has redefined the way we live together. It is part bulletin board, part kangaroo court, part stand-up comedy stage. A lost slipper gets the same urgency as a missing child. A dog-bite ...