The millions of people of Indian origin living in North America and Europe face a conundrum this holiday season: what to take, or send home, to relatives in India? Thanks to India’s increasingly open economy, no one there seems to want much from the West any more.

How things have changed. In Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel The Namesake, the protagonist’s mother precedes a visit home to India in the early 1970s with a shopping trip in Boston. She buys ‘’percale pillowcases, coloured candles, soaps on ropes'’. At a drugstore she purchases ‘’a Timex watch for her father-in-law, Bic pens for her cousins'’ - all items that were scarce or unavailable in India, or simply regarded as luxuries by people who had lived in a state-controlled economy since their independence from Britain in 1947.

Lahiri’s account rings true. Trips home have always been considered both a pleasure and a duty for Indians living abroad, and a central theme has been foreign largesse bestowed upon grateful family.

That era has now passed. Tunku Varadarajan in the Financial Times describes the change. Later in the piece, Suketu Mehta and I share our experiences with Tunku. Here’s Suketu: ‘’In the Seventies, our relatives marvelled at the bounty of America: toasters, razors, two-in-one radios, pens with digital clocks. On my trips back to India, I’d get lists of requests from family and friends, including, once, the bra and panty sizes for the daughter of our conservative Marwari neighbours - ‘preferably Marks & Spencer’.'’ Now it’s the Manhattan-based Mehta who has the extra empty suitcase when he travels to India. ‘’I buy jeans, watches and stoneware for my dinner table - all cheaper in India. And it’s my family in India that gets sent long lists before their trips to America. Revenge is sweet.'’

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