It was almost uncanny. For weeks after India launched military operations in Kargil I kept my ears open for an argument, an opinion, a comment, something, anything. In vain. It wasn't just that life continued as usual with people going to work, packed movie halls, parties and product launches; but that nobody wanted to talk about it. I went through whole evenings of conversations: business, cricket, movies, books, restaurants, holiday plans but no Kargil.

Just a point, though. There are scores of causes in the country that could do with more funds: poverty alleviation, rural development, battered women, homeless destitutes. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the purse strings loosened by war could stay open during peacetime?

Having lived in the suburbs all my life I have always been on this side of the north-south war. The side that tears its hair out at the familiar South Mumbai refrain: ``for me the city ends somewhere around Dadar.'' But now with the city stretching andexpanding to scatter friends further north and east I find myself echoing similar snotty sentiments. The realisation shamed me last month into getting on to a train and heading for Thane. Wide clean roads (courtesy the wildly popular municipal commissioner Chandrashekhar), quiet residential colonies, a view of green hills and lakes abutting the roads, one of which houses the floating restaurant that burnt down earlier this year. There are pool parlours and ice cream parlours, a Benneton and a Reebok. Yet there is something mofussil, something of an older Mumbai still living. Buildings that resemble pink two-tier cakes loom up right off the street without a dividing wall or compound, there are gajras outside the station, the shops display mostly Indian clothes, the sole downtown bookshop - a basement affair - has only a scattering of English language fiction amidst a small collection of Marathi titles. But the market is buzzing with life. Velvet sari blouses, shiny green bikini frocks, cheap cosmetics,pants, shirts and salwar khameezes are all on sale. Music, long-forgotten film songs from the seventies, plays on loudspeakers. And across every shop hangs a banner announcing the Grand Naupada Shopping Festival. With that is a few discounts and lucky dips. But what a marketing gimmick. Perhaps other localities could try it out too. The Great Linking Road Shopping Festival! The Grand Colaba Causeway Shopping Festival! Not a bad idea.

The hottest selling bit of kitsch these days is a key chain with a little transparent teddy bear. It comes in the palest of tints: yellow, red, green. You can see it twinkling everywhere - in roadside kiosks, with street vendors, hooked onto staid ladies' handbags. At five rupees a piece it is clearly an irresistible piece of cuddly magic.

The writer is a former editor of Elle