India, Oct. 30 -- I vividly recall several events in the late 1990s, marked as they were by the rise of Atal Bihari Vajpayee as the prime minister, and the ascendance of the BJP-led NDA coalition governments at the Centre, Kargil conflict, and the humiliating hijacking of IC-814 flight to Kandahar. Of course, who can forget the scare and trauma, and the manufactured hype around the Y2k virus in 1999. But beyond this, there was something else that I keep remembering about those years.

Thanks to relatives and friends, I used to frequently visit a few government colonies like RK Puram in New Delhi, and the naval officers' colonies like NOFRA in Colaba, Mumbai. By 1998, there was a smattering of the new Maruti-Suzuki cars, the 800 model, and...