On mildly depressing days, mildly exciting purchases are made: matching Bombay Dyeing bedsheets and pillowcovers and a deep, soft-sinking pillow.
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On the evening of a national holiday, the crowded market's streets are empty. Flowers are strewn across the road, banners are hanging limply from hastily constructed wooden poles, the occasional cycle rickshaw hurtles past, its rider whistling lewd Hindi film tunes.
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At the end of a long, eye-blurring day, my video editor discovers I cannot speak Hindi. "Chapa?," he asks, tauntingly. "Voh kya hota hai?" (And it's almost 9 and I'm still here, dangerously close to missing the office ride home. And dinner).
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Late at night, you can zip across the toll road and get dropped off at a glitzy 24-hour convenience store with bright lights, stocking Pringles and soy milk. When boys invite you home, they promise to cook and, being the New Generation, their delicacies are bruschetta, pastas and other food also available in these same instant eight-minute packs (though theirs is the real thing, made with metrosexual care).
Other midnight shoppers are also, like me, single people suspended in big-city life. Boys with pierced ears and young mums shop in the neighbouring aisles, even at this late hour, buying cigarettes and expensive breads. (And the sambhar powder and kofta mixes lie sadly neglected, because we are the New Generation that tosses together some dinner, and doesn't grind or steam it. If I were young and studying abroad, perhaps I might separate a dear MTR pack from a huddle of others in a big, black suitcase. But in India, my insta-dinner is an eight minute tomato and herb conconction, with Nestle cartoned milk and margarine.) How different from one generation earlier which survived a hostile small-town Ludhiana, with no quick LPG connections or cellular phones.
