Why did Ramesh not take his tomatoes to the mandi?

For years, Ramesh had sold his tomatoes to the same trader, who came to the village in a truck at harvest time and named the price. Ramesh had no way of knowing whether it was a fair one. The trader always said the market was bad.

His daughter Kavitha, who was in Class 11, had a phone with a cracked screen and a data pack her uncle paid for. One evening she sat beside her father and showed him a government app that listed the prices at mandis across the district.

Ramesh was not interested. "The app doesn't buy tomatoes," he said.

But the next morning, when the trader offered eight rupees a kilo, Kavitha checked the app. At the mandi in the town, forty kilometres away, tomatoes were selling for nineteen.

Ramesh thought about the cost of hiring a tempo, about the day he would lose, about the trader, whom he had known for twenty years. Then he looked at the number on his daughter's phone.

He did not go to the mandi. Instead, he told the trader what the app said. The trader laughed, then grumbled, then raised his price to fourteen. It was less than nineteen, but it was much more than eight, and Ramesh did not have to hire a tempo.

That night Ramesh asked Kavitha to show him how the app worked. He was slow with the screen, and he held the phone too far from his eyes. But he did not say again that the app didn't buy tomatoes.