The best advertised site is the Rediff On The Net site, which has a range of shopping and travel-related services to offer. It boasts of one million hits a day. However, online shopping from India is still a grey area that the company's working on. Says Jasmit Singh, head of e-commerce marketing, Rediff On The Net: ``It's too early to say anything about e-commerce. We have been in the market only for four months, but the response has beenenthusiastic.''

But try the movie ticket queue for the most trying time. At PVRmovies.com, for a show on a particular day, you are allowed only one ticket. Who would go to the movies alone? The day before the show, you can book two tickets, two days before, three tickets and a week before, a maximum of four tickets. Obviously, the quota allotted for Internet bookings is very limited. Almost all the malls require registration before you can make any purchase. And in many, you have to wait a day or two before you can start loading that shopping cart. To make sure the buyers are authentic, a registration number is sent by snail mail, which has to be used at the time of ordering, taking the convenience out of e-shopping.

Take Phalakflowers--Delhi's first 24-hour online flower shop--for example. The site caters mainly to NRI browsers, who would like to send flowers to their relatives in North India. Therefore, the prices are all quoted in dollars. And they have a rider, too: ``All you have to do is to maintainan account with us of at least $20 or it's equivalent in any currency, by sending us the amount through a draft payable at Delhi or sending a telegraphic transfer. We will issue to you a personal code which you can use while filling in the order form and we will deliver flower arrangement of your choice immediately ( within 12 hours ).''

The site promises instant local orderdelivery for people based in Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida and Faridabad who can avail instant ``cash on delivery'' service (within six hours) between 8 am and 8 pm. While that sounds very good, the hitch here comes with an extra amount being charged--besides the flower arrangement price--for delivery if the order has to be delivered to one address and the amount collected from another address. But books and music are two hot areas where some sites offer big listings. Rediff, for example, claims over 60,000 titles of music and many more books, which are updated almost every day. Here they make some special offers for music and books atdiscounted rates.

The concept of having entire markets on the Net, too, has caught on in Delhi. Lajpatnagarmarket.com was one of the first to go online. But the shops offer limited selections, though a few offer discounts.

SouthExtensionmarket.com has been the next one to go online, with Greater Kailash Market, Connaught Place and others trying to get their shops online.The bigger e-malls, like the AIS Club, have some of the better known shops like The Music Shop of Khan Market, Giggles and a few other stores. But till such time that all these shops begin to offer proper lists and competitive rates as actual shopping, e-shopping may remain just a bored Delhi browser's pastime.