The swanky ice cream shop (well it is more like a showroom) for Häagen-Dazs in the mall next door sees quite a footfall for scoops priced at Rs.200. Walking past it brought me back to the days when the Rs.2 orange bar outside my school in Delhi was the enjoyable ice cream experience we looked forward to.
I got to thinking about our casual spends: eating out, shopping, birthdays.... In my childhood, such things were always rationed. My father was in the armed forces—the Air Force to be precise—and despite all the subsidies that personnel and their families enjoyed, in the early-1990s, money was tight. The government salary of one earning member just didn’t support the frills. The number of colas we were allowed to sign for in the officer’s mess, was limited to one in a fortnight.
