The Luckies
The Labelled, Urban, Chilled, Kicked-with-life Indians are here. The most fortunate ever if only for the choices before it, this generation is glib, global, cocky and informed-and chases success with an awesome spending power.

Wages Of Peace
The Centre's decision to extend its cease-fire with the NSCN(I-M)
to three other north-east states leads to large-scale violence
in Manipur.

Man Of Letters
Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik's skill with the quill has the PMO busy acknowledging his missives. And on occasion agreeing to his demands.

Civil Lines
Pervez Musharraf's assuming the office of President is being seen as a bid to legitimise his position. A look at what this means in the context of his India visit.

Peace In Pipeline
India wants to put on Iran the onus of ensuring safe transit of gas.

COVER STORY: URBAN YOUTH

No More A Elitist's Delight

The first rule of a Lucki is style-and the first rule of style is to have money. And later, to know how to spend it. Until the 1980s, it was a picayune class of Indians that took the benefits of the global adventure like it was its birth right. Their offspring would study at boarding schools in India or London and, if they had pass-like grades, snootily move on to Oxbridge and Harvard. Their holidays would be in St Moritz, Paris or the indolent resorts of the French Riviera. For them, unlike the rest of India, indulgence was never injurious-it was the opium of the elite. The gradual opening up of the economy in the 1980s leading to the watershed reforms of the 1990s saw the storming of these bastions. By the New Rank Outsider as the Indian nouveau riche came into its own. As restrictions lapsed, tax-lucky exports and trade thrived and markets boomed, the new spendthrifts began a material revolution that jeered at such Socialist rebukes against "ostentatious spending". Spending money was no longer seen as vulgar. And the Luckies would be the grand inheritors of this legacy. "Schoolchildren drive to school in Honda Citys where we walked or bicycled in our time," says Dr Monica Chib, a psychiatrist at Delhi's Apollo hospital. "Parents give them all they never had, hoping that their children will, as a result, be more successful."

Studying abroad, once a staunchly elitist prerogative, has now become so routine that universities, not only the traditional ones in the United States and England but also in Australia and New Zealand, are swarming with Indian students. Kolkata-based Saurav Jalan, with the healthy backing of his father, plans to do an MBA in the US (after he couldn't get through London School of Economics) and is now taking his TOEFL and GMAT seriously. And Rama Kulkarni, 19, currently doing her BFA in textile designing at Mumbai's JJ School of Art, keeps networking with her seniors for information on international access. "I'm still in my first year so I have lots of time to decide," she says, "but I simply love the idea of studying abroad." A couple of decades ago it would have remained just an idea. The new-fashioned accent on trade has made international travel also much easier. Now, through bargain air tickets and an increased forex allowance, youngsters could see the original fountainheads of TV-aired imagery. Lonely Planet-type budget trippers, MBA contenders or teens visiting their London uncles and aunties, all boost cultural cross-pollination when they come back with the latest software technology, a smarter wardrobe and Puff Daddy's latest add-on. Anmol Singh, an 18-year-old college-goer from Delhi, ensures he goes for at least one trip abroad each year. Zeesham Mukhi, a year older and a second year engineering student from MHSS College, Mumbai, exclusively goes to Dubai for the annual shopping festival bringing back a bagful of CDs, electronic gizmos and designer clothes.

The independence of the Lucki marks him out from the generation before him, but comes at a price. "We are exposed to so much so fast-sex, drugs and competition," says Pooja Mukherjee, a 19-year-old ballet dancer and model, "that our emotional baggage is greater."

Yet the Luckies frolic in the spacious sexuality of the times. They have, after watching their luckless predecessors, adopted a double-barrelled approach: one, that marriage is not a slapdash union of a post-college romance and a first-job wallet, and two, the more you flirt, the better you get at it. Luckies, therefore, are no-hang-up libertines; in no rush to get married or, as one teenager put it, remain "forcefully committed", but in every hurry to add variety to their sensual interaction, the opportunities for which are steadily increasing. Delhi-based Debarpita Bannerjee, 25, an ambitious associate account director with Leo Burnett says that she has been dating "on and off" ever since college and that marriage is not a priority because she wants to give "100 per cent to her job". "I'll think about it when the right guys comes along," she says. Malcolm Khurshed, an 18-year-old Mumbaikar, says that although he has a long-time girlfriend (with whom he keeps "making and breaking up"), he keeps casually dating other girls in-between "whenever someone catches my fancy". Marriage is a short street, and the U-turn is quick. Divorce lawyers talk about Lucki marriages breaking up in weeks due to reasons like "I was not being served bed tea in the morning".

MetroScape

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Sleaze And Salvation