Sunil Sethi:An evening with Heidi and Ladult

AL FRESCO

I was whizzed up the 12th floor of a smart suburban residential block and down a sleek corridor into a 1,200 square feet two-bedroom apartment, the style and quality of which took me greatly by surprise. Apart from the kitchen and bathrooms, the parquet floors were in pale and dark-grained woods ("They're hard-wearing and scratch-resistant""they'll take any kind of footwear"). The cream-coloured bathroom fittings, from Thailand, gleamed on satiny black granite from Karnataka. The door handles, in brushed stainless steel, matched many of the appliances in the spotless, uber-chic small kitchen from Korea. There was a 30-inch plasma screen TV on the bedroom wall and separate headphones (made in Germany) on either side of the double bed. The modernist straight-lined furniture in the living room was from China or handmade by a local carpenter, based on selected designs snipped from foreign magazines. For fun, there were Robert Mapplethorpe's photographic prints on the wall, Pop Art shower curtains in the loo, a rug in psychedelic stripes on the floor and sheer net curtains with polka dots that billowed in the breeze. It all looked familiar but strangely unfamiliar. It reminded me of something""but what?

My hosts inadvertently supplied the answer. "We wanted a kind of retro Sixties-Seventies sort of look""you know Formica-topped modernism, Robert Rauchenberg and all that. Ethnic rubbish is out." They are the kind of young couple""first-time homeowners in their late 20s, corporate jobs, glass of wine at the ready""who used to be known as DINKS (Double Income, No Kids). They're now respectively known as Heidi (Highly Educated, Independent, Degree Carrying Individual) or Ladult (Lad-as-Urbane-Adult). They live in the new developments of Gurgaon and there are thousands like them. But I owed them an explanation of what the 1970s was really like.

For one, there was dim chance of being able to buy a flat in Gurgaon (or anywhere else) on long-term, easy-to-pay EMIs. Twenty-somethings in equivalent jobs lived a shambolic, more or less hand-to-mouth existence. There was no credit""and no credit cards""-and it could take months of wrangling to get a phone or gas connection. Buying a refrigerator or car was a serious financial decision, put off from year to year. Cheap rum and gin were the tipples, not wine. In the early 1980s, when a well-paid friend moved to Mumbai, his life for ages revolved round finding the four Fs""a flat, fridge, phone and Fiat.

Heidi and Ladult had a good laugh about that""and then they were ready to take me out to dinner. They don't cook much at home. The slickly-appointed kitchen is seldom strained to produce anything more than cereal for breakfast and cheese toast or pasta for dinner. Sometimes on a Sunday they will make dal or rice but usually they order a biryani in.

In a large lounge bar, furnished in a style akin to their apartment, Ladult ordered margaritas and platters of Lebanese mezze and soon we were joined by some of their friends and neighbours""more Heidis and Ladults. Some subjects, I was relieved to note, had not changed in 25 years""quarrels with bosses, a friend's divorce, a colleague's troubled love life. Others, such as a preoccupation with gyms, stocks, bigger apartments and summer holidays in Bali or Tuscany, were new.

The group of Heidis and Ladults seemed so focused on their pleasure and happy with their jobs and surplus incomes; I wondered if there was something missing. Later, as we said goodbye, I asked my hosts how they saw themselves 10 or 20 years from now. Did they plan a family? Did they save? Where would they want to end up one day? "Our main saving is the flat we've bought," said Heidi. "No, we're not a planning a baby." "Trust your generation to worry about such things," laughed Ladult. "It's what I call the old LIC mindset."

They appeared supremely confident about the future and largely devoid of doubt. If this how some Indians feel, I wouldn't mind being 20-something again in 2005.