The cricket over, and a little more shopping done, I went off in search of light refreshment in a typically unfocused sort of way. As I skirted Horniman Circle, I discovered something new in town...
Yes, it's a Starbucks. Frightening, when you think about it, that in a city where people sleep on the streets in their tens of thousands, and many others are only barely better off, you can buy an iced Raspberry Truffle Mocha for 294 Rupees - about £3. To put this into context, a twenty minute taxi ride costs about a third of that.
And yes, it's very nice, as a visitor to town, to have somewhere familiar and easy to stop and rest your feet, but given how few tourists come here, it is local custom that will keep it going.
India is brand crazy, with a curious inferiority complex when it comes to status - foreign always seems better here, and if you can afford the imported alternative, you buy it. Starbucks is merely taking advantage of that, so I guess that I shouldn't be terribly surprised. There is one obvious difference though, in that here, they are in partnership with Tata, which hopefully means that some of the money is circulating back into the domestic economy.
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