LETTER FROM THE MINDI AIt's there, if you look hard enough, almost lost in the midst of ancient India of bullock carts and lepers, ash-smeared sadhus and farm walls plastered with dried dung ; the not-so-ancient India of fume-emitting rickshaws, moldy concrete apartment buildings and shantytowns the size of small cities; the tourist India of taxi drivers and the Taj Mahal. It is there, in the leather-clad teenagers of the South Delhi multiplex, shelling out 110 rupees (about two days' average wage) for the latest Hollywood release; in the VJs who strenuously aped trendy Western styles on India's MTV; in the handsome and dignified Rajasthani painter, scion of an ancient family of Rajput aristocrats and creator of exquisite miniatures, who responded, receiving compliments for the vitality of Indian craft traditions compared to those of the United States, ''Yes, but you have the computer''; and in all the young Indians, especially the women, who were so eager to hear all that my wife and I had to tell them about life in "America," and especially about the remarkable fact that in our country, nearly all Weddings are what Indians call, pejoratively, "love matches" – as opposed to the organized ones that the vast majority of them continue to have. Not a new India – it is too early to say – but a new attitude, a new class and even the beginning of a new type of Indian. Because although the world has always come to India, India has never gone to the world. Conquerors have been arriving for millennia: Aryans, Greeks, Scythians, Huns, Arabs, Turks, Afghans, Mongols and Mughals through the Afghan passes; Portuguese and English across the sea – and while India dealt with them… half the paper… (not that Sita seems to have needed any help in this regard). As for Harintha herself, an actress, she has never really tried to excel in her work – she has gravitated more towards teaching than acting – because Indian women are not supposed to put themselves in the spotlight, literally or figuratively. There may be an evolution here: from the 34-year-old who copes with her limited possibilities by adjusting her expectations downward, to the 16-year-old who may not have a greater degree of hope but who refuses to repress her discontent. Maybe he'll learn to make the same changes as he grows up, but maybe not. Perhaps, a generation later, she represents something new: a new kind of woman, a new kind of person, one that India will soon look like no more. Responsibilities begin in dreams: revolutions are born from such discontent.