IN NEW DELHI
DELHI has changed so much since I last visited India’s capital four years ago.
Then, the most convenient meal was dosai. Today, it is just as easy to go Mediterranean. A short walk and no longer common paan spit away from my hotel is Fresco – a plate of spinach lasagna and mushroom costs less than $13 – which opened three weeks ago.
It is the third restaurant of a chain which was launched three years ago, and obviously thriving. It was past 10pm when I dined there. And the place had its share of well-heeled, middle-class Delhiites, their Hondas, Toyotas and Hyundais parked outside where there were two aged women, clothes tattered, hair dishevelled, faces caked with dust, ready to offer their cups for spare change or leftover food.
The handful of beggars remaining in Delhi are seen only at night these days. The rest have been told to leave for the duration of the Commonwealth Games, but they will be back once it is over, an Indian journalist told me.
The streets are especially clean of litter. Early each morning, cleaners in bibs pick up after their countrymen for whom the use of a bin continues to prove elusive.
On TV, while nudity remains taboo, sex is not. In one show, an "undercover agent" tests the loyalty of an unsuspecting cheat at his/her partner’s request. It all usually ends in confrontation and tears. Another reality show which hunts for Indian models features a male host who prefers to flirt with other males. Most of the time, however, is spent watching advertisements, even if there are more than 50 channels.
"Delhi is nothing like it was four years ago," the journalist told me. "Affluence and the middle-class have grown – that’s why the traffic is so bad, everyone can afford a car. Delhi is now about consumerism."
There was hardly a pothole on the roads I travelled on. Signboards are brand-new blue. Bus stops are shiny aluminium. I have not seen a motorbike carry more than two people – once four was common. Even traditional kulfi has given way to Movenpick.
Delhi has certainly changed.