Column

I am sitting at my favourite Deli in South Mumbai — filing this piece. At hand is a cup of freshly brewed Colombian Coffee, I have my laptop signed on to the net through my nifty wireless card, and my mobile phone which also accesses the net is nearby — in case I need a back-up.

In the Deli the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo. I kid thee not, I am surrounded by well-heeled ladies the kind who like to buy their filet mignons and tenderloins from service staff who could at a pinch discuss the newest Almodovar movie. The women are dressed in what I describe as India Modern: jeans from True Religion, Gap Tees, Fendi bags, and strappy sandals from Colaba. It is more LA with bits of Madrid thrown in than New York. And they chatter incessantly about art, design, books and yes, movies.

The staff at this Deli speaks impeccable English, and has the confidence of young people who know they have the world at their feet. Unlike the hierarchies of yore, there is none of the fawning and forelock tugging that typified the Salaam Sir generation of our parents. Here the young men and women have attitude and then some. They know their Bordeaux from their Burgundies and look you in the eye when they speak.

How very different life is here in India in the age of reform. Australian meats, Italian jeans, wifi connectivity, mobile technology!

A few weeks ago I was in London, sitting at my favourite Starbucks in Hampstead sipping similar coffee, filing a story on my laptop, with similar amenities around me. Even my fellow victims of the overpriced coffee phenomena appeared the same: stylish women, up-to-date on art, books and movies enjoying a leisurely dawdle in pleasing circumstances.

How flat the world has become — how globally integrated we are! Sometimes I wonder if I am the only one who registers all this rapid change in lifestyle. Am I the only one who has to pinch myself and wonder how rapidly a slice of India has caught up with the rest of the world post disinvestment, privatisation and the IT boom?

Will those born after 1990 ever know of what it was like in the Bad Old Days when TV was one government channel and black and white and plastic was what buckets were made of — and not what you paid your bills with?

So here I am rounding off this piece, finishing the last dregs of the coffee, after which I will settle the bill with my credit card, call the driver on his mobile and get in to my Japanese car to go home to my imported, international, globally integrated life.

But the potholes-ah-the-potholes on the road on my way home will be made in India!

s_malavika@dnaindia.net