Before it was a hipster trend in Brooklyn, the Indian woman was drinking haldi doodh for inflammation, kala namak for digestion, and ghee for joint health. She is the CEO of family health. She knows that ajwain (carom seeds) is for colic, and kadha (herbal decoction) is for a cold.
In India's metropolitan centres—Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad—a new generation of women is negotiating a different kind of life. Urban, educated, and skilled, young women seek employment in cafes, shopping malls, call centres, and offices, participating in the expanding service economy. Their employment enables access to things—jeans, smartphones, English proficiency, metro travel—that symbolise global modernity. Women's employment has increasingly become a desirable criterion in arranging marriages, indicating the need for multiple incomes to sustain "New Middle Class" lives in urban India. Before it was a hipster trend in Brooklyn,