AFTER OLD DELHI'S spice market, the Taj Mahal and Agra Fort, comes a different face of India.
As passing visitors to New Delhi, it was our first brush with contemporary India, where the young and fashionable congregate. At New Delhi's F-Bar - that's F for Fashion TV - pretty teenage models and pouting boys packed the place for the first of the monthly new face searches, instigated by the Elite Modelling Agency.
When Rohit Bal, arguably the country's most provocative dress designer, arrived, the girls began to edge in his direction, trying their best to catch the attention of those in charge.
In India, the media rules, and to be discovered takes you up the ladder. The fashion trade is one way to get there.
Since the early 1990s, Bal has been making ripples in the fashion industry. One of the best-known designers in India, as a teenager in Kashmir his first endeavour involved restyling of a pair of corduroy bell-bottom trousers with some fancy tassels.
Now the media love him, but there are fashion writers who are often not enamoured with his creative output.
'Indian men have no sense of fashion. However, teenagers are incredible with their dress sense. Guys in their 20s to 30s are appalling dressers or, if they can afford to, they are into the very expensive mainstream European brands,' Bal said.