There is a nearby chai-wallah whose name is Manmohan Singh. If you are new to his stall he will tell you this as he pours his liquid fudge mix of tea, milk, sugar, cardamom and black pepper from one pan to another. He can talk while looking straight at you, and pour at the same time without a splash. His name has stood him in very good stead twice over; first time around during the early 90s when his namesake was deftly dragging the Indian economy out of the mire of bankruptcy; this time because that same former union finance minister is now the 14th prime minister of India. Manmohan Chai-wallah is equally astute about money in his own much smaller universe, his patch being one of the main meeting points near the college gates close to where I live in South Delhi. Everyone used to meet there, from taxi-wallahs right up to the wealthiest students, the latter tip to toe in Ray Bans and Nike. This crowd hunkered down on the grubby little wooden stumps that surround Manmohan’s stand, so as to drag out their tiny glasses of chai for as long as possible, while the taxi-wallahs stared all the designer labels and the girls.

Last year, as the new prime minister inherited a booming economy from his predeccesor, Manmohan Chai-wallah put up his prices by the equivalent of about one pence a glass. His public statement was that it was to mark the arrival of a frugal man in the seat of power. Privately he told his long-standing customers that it was because the students had forsaken him, that they had abandoned him in favour of the cheap trick that had been played on him and all his fellow chai-wallahs by the purveyors of a detestable beverage, as Monmohan referred to it, that comes in at roughly six times the price of his chai.

India’s very own version of coffee society had come to town, and though it seemed baddish news for Manmohan Chai-wallah it means no more grubby stools and furtive glances across very small glasses for youth in search of intimacy. The cappuccino school of flirting has arrived and after college socialising has never had it so good. Mummy/Daddy are happy for Sanjay/Samia to spend all hours, as long as they are daylight ones, gazing deep into each other’s dreamy brown eyes over cappuccinos, lattes, muffins and biscotti, the prices of which make Manmohan Chai-wallah sigh and study the stock market coffee bean prices on the finance pages. He started thinking of investing in a second-hand ‘Gaghia’  coffee machine. I told him that this was not the right spelling, and that a double ‘g’ was the real thing. Manmohan sighed again and thought that the dopey-eyed teens would not notice either way. I did not venture further into the crux of the matter, that being the power of being able to slump lower and lower across a table towards your pal and their latte—just a whole load sexier than batting flies away between Manmohan’s bum-polished stumps.

‘You will not give up on my chai stall?’ he challenged me.

‘No, no,’ I assured him.

But I lied. I do still go and take chai with Manmohan but I am inextricably drawn to watching the table-sliding couples and quartets in Baristas all across town.

Meanwhile Mr Sandeep Vyas at Barista Coffee announced plans to go international, maybe South-East Asia, maybe Europe.

‘Good news,’ said Manmohan when I told him. ‘This means he will be out of my backyard then.’ And he sent his brother-in-law to negotiate on the ‘Gaghia’.

So, I sit guiltily in Baristas from Khan Market to Gurgaon over-hearing everything from the innocent: ‘So cool naar, we have tickets for Ash’s new movie’, to the worst fears of Mummy/Daddy: ‘Samia, I’ve got my Dad’s car tonight, want to go to that late party.’ And all the time the cappuccino machines froth and grind in the background while Manmohan still struggles with getting the pressure right in his second-hand, third rate steamer arm.

(originally published in Condé Nast Traveller UK edition June 2006)