Lost in India — Dial 62 for Any Local City Information

There was a time, not long ago, when getting lost in an Indian city was a phone call away from being solved. No maps app, no search bar — just a short helpline number, a patient operator on the other end, and your question: where is the nearest chemist that stays open late, which bus goes to the station, who fixes refrigerators in this part of town.

Services like these were India's original local search. JustDial had already made its famous number a household name, and a wave of city helplines promised the same thing: any local information, on demand, in your own language. The operators were the search engine. You asked a messy human question — "my cousin is visiting and needs a decent hotel near the railway station, not too expensive" — and got a messy human answer, filtered through someone who actually knew the city.

It sounds primitive now. But there was something the helplines understood that the apps took years to learn: when you are lost in a new city, you don't want ten thousand results. You want one person who knows. The smartphone won, of course — it always does — but the next time your maps app confidently routes you through a lane that doesn't exist, spare a thought for the operator who would have just told you to take the second left after the banyan tree.