New Delhi, Sept. 25 -- A friend of mine-32, terminally online and a committed doomscroller-started shooting with film again this past winter. Not with a hand-me-down camera dug out of a dusty old box, but with a mint-condition Olympus that she paid close to Rs.50,000 for from a US resale site. Now, she waits a couple of days, if not longer, to find out if a photo she took turned out half decent. In a world where her iPhone 17 offered infinite retakes and instant previews, she chooses to wait, on purpose.

My friend isn't an outlier. An ever-growing number of people are suddenly fascinated with buying gadgets that Silicon Valley spent two decades trying to make obsolete. Global vinyl sales crossed $2.1 billion in 2025, flip phones are attr...