The Indian Habitat Centre in New Delhi is a quirky place to stay in. It is a huge campus with lots of interconnected halls and buildings. Inbetween these halls are plazas with sculptures done by brilliant sculptors both Indian and International. There are also beautiful water bodies gracing all the plazas with thickly flowering hot pink water lillies.

The first evening, many of my school chums of over 40 years had a get together in the American Diner restaurant in The Habitat. It was lovely meeting them after so many decades and though grey has set in, their faces have not changed at all. The warm smiles of welcome, the happy catching up of what each one is doing with their lives, exchanging notes on other school chums. One hour just fled in minutes and it was so sad to have to say goodbye.

Later a very close friend arrived and off we went to saunter through the art galleries in the Habitat while she brought me up to scratch about her life and about the artists we were viewing. She had risen in the ranks of the Customs and even headed the All India Customs department before she retired. Wow! after we parted ways in school, she went to Vassar College on a scholarship. Vassar is a private, coeducational, liberal arts college in the town of Poughkeepsie, New York, in the United States. My friend spent four years there and then returned home to New Delhi after which she sat for the IAS exams and joined the Customs.

I just sat and listened to her in awe, so simple and unassuming after that wonderful career. She had never married and adopted a girl child whom she loves with all her heart and is of college going age now. How I wished I had kept in touch, because I related to her my horror of going to the customs house in Bangalore and finding all the pure virginal white tulle and chantilly lace of my wedding dress, sent by a friend in the Middle East, pulled out and lying all over the filthy customs house floor.
She drove me to the Hauz Khas village and took me around some historical monuments standing there which were an ancient Islamic seminary, tank and pavilions dating back to Allaudin Khiljis time - 1296 - 1316. It was sad we reached there after dark so no pictures were taken, but it was something I had never seen before.

After which her daughter brought us oldies upto scratch about how hot and happening the Hauz Khas village was and that we should have dinner there. The old village began to get noticed when in the mid-1980s when designer boutiques of fashion designer like Bina Ramani, started moving in. Then, in the late 1990s restaurants started coming up in the area, today it has around 40 restaurants, bars, pubs and cafes. Go to Imperfecto suggested her daughter and we did. In seconds we were out as it was more a disco for youngsters than for us. So we climbed into New York Slice and stuffed our faces with very nice pizzas and cold coffee.

Then to work off the excesses, we walked around the clothing stories called Grey Garden, ORCR for the modern heroine it said, Bodice which boasted of 'edgy minimalism', Love Birds which introduced itself as Pop Irreverence, it was fun walking around the stories and looking at what they had on sale. Most definitely, girls in Delhi are safer than the situation in Bangalore. We saw many in the village with the most 'revealing' clothes which the moral police frown upon in Bangalore.

The next day was my conference so we decided to get by at least by 10 pm so could rest and get ready for the big day which I had come to New Delhi for.