It was July 2001 that I visited India for the first time. I was in New Delhi, my husband’s home town, for our wedding. “What an old-fashioned airport!”. It was my first impression of India just after landing. An old and small building, dusky illumination, poor quality immigration form, and staff who seemed to be languid… At that moment, I realized why my husband suggested to me to go to the bathroom before the aircraft landed. The restroom of the airport seemed to be an old type too.
I went to New Delhi on a business trip last month. 13 years from that day, the airport has completely changed. There is nothing left of how it used to look. Not only the airport, but also the cityscape has been changing dramatically. I visit New Delhi once in at least a year, and I notice new shopping malls or luxury hotels are built each time. On the other hand, the local market and mall from old times are still thriving and visiting such places makes me relieved.
In this trip, my client stayed at a hotel which was located next to the “City Walk Shopping Centre” and we had a chance to have lunch and dinner at the mall. Most of restaurants and cafés have recently opened. Starbucks café was there and full of customers. I saw an Irish Bar which has elegant interior decoration and was not serving “domestic” kingfisher beer. The authentic Italian pizzeria, Amici Café, was serving fragrant pizza which was baked in a brick oven.
One of the most impressive restaurants was “Johnny Rockets”. Johnny Rockets is the Los Angeles based hamburger restaurant franchise, and is famous for a beef burger and a milk shake. The brand new restaurant was located in the centre of the shopping mall. The open air dining was overtly showing the interior to people coming and going. I thought they would be selling only chicken, lamb, and vegetable burgers, but in fact, at the top of the menu was tenderloin (beef) burger. It was quite surprising!
One day, we went to the “B-Bar”, which is an oriental cuisine restaurant and bar. When I saw the drink menu, my eyes were glued to a page which was listing Japanese alcoholic beverages. One bottle of Shochu (barely liquor) was over Rs. 10,000 and plum wine was about Rs. 30,000! Compared to the original price, these were over 10 times the value in Japan. I also found a bottle of French wine which was priced over 1 lakhs rupees. It was more laughable than surprising.
Year after year, it is getting difficult to express the change of lifestyle in India to the people of other nationality. Especially in Japan, the media rarely talk about India. The information is limited and the people’s knowledge of India is very poor. In India, nobody eats beef. In India, most of males wear turban. In India, everybody want to take a bath at the Ganges…When I introduce India to Japanese people, the introduction part always get longer, because some explanation is necessary before getting to the main point. Now I am afraid that the introduction parts will be longer and longer.