One of the features of my student days in Delhi during the big, bad years of the shortage economy in the early-1970s was the sheer modesty of expectations. For the more sartorially conscious students, the ultimate of high fashion lay in possessing a pair of Levis jeans. Indeed, faded American-made denim trousers was such a craze that shopkeepers around Mohan Singh Place, off Connaught Circus, made a handsome profit buying jeans from foreign backpackers and re-selling these to deprived Indians at a premium.