Looking for the easy life

The anonymity Delhi offered to make up in some measure for what we suffered by way of distances, traffic, and now pollution, says the author

There was a time I thought longingly of living in a small town or cantonment such as the many I had grown up in — Coonoor, Deolali, Mhow, Pathankot, Dharamsala, Jammu, Shillong, Bikaner — which seemed ideal given their size, and not entirely devoid of facilities. But these romantic notions took a toll every time one visited family, or friends, to return disheartened. If one lacked in bookshops, another didn’t have a bakery; if medical amenities were missing in one, another had resisted improvements in infrastructure. And charming as they were, their residents were given to vitiating gossip. Slowly, the