What Has Changed And What Has Not

The restaurants are decorated in similar fashion all over the world, with bits of Americana scattered over the walls and ceilings.

The TGIF shipment list to Delhi would have read something like: one cigarette factory sign, one soap-box derby car, one old typewriter (for wall-hanging purposes), one old snowshoe (not for use in snow), one Kayak (for suspension from ceiling).

Sitting in the restaurant the other day, surrounded by people with mobile telephones, I was struck by the thought that the entire scene would have been inconceivable when I first visited India six years ago. Then, arriving from the West, you had a sense of stepping back in time quite a long way. But this is no longer so true.

Not hat modernity has to mean adopting western paraphernalia