A recent conversation with an old friend turned to people we’d known during our university days. These are the people who had fought hard and smart for the most coveted positions, for the well-paid, high-profile careers. They are now married, and expecting or attending to their offspring. The women especially are now more than happy to trade notes on teething problems rather than the latest BP crisis in the Gulf of Mexico. It made me think.

Do we really not have to be feminists anymore, because our grandmothers and mothers fought that war for us?

When visiting Italy a while ago, a classmate and close friend confided that although she was as qualified and more experienced than her husband, it would be unheard of for her to choose her work over staying at home and looking after the children. This, in a First World country where even the toilets are automated!

On Saturdays we’d stroll through the morning markets, people-watching. An oddity struck me again and again – over-30 women with babies, toddlers, or pregnant. Rarely did one see a young mother. In contrast, most parents with children under the age of five, in India, would be young grandparents or at least parents of teenagers! It seems that for women to juggle careers and home is becoming more of an impossibility, so many choose to finish their careers by their early-to-mid thirties, and then be wives and mothers. Again, an either-or scenario.

Watching India come into its own, one can’t help but wonder: Is this really progress? A degree in engineering by the age of 21, an over-paying job that works you mercilessly, marriage at 25, a three-bedroom apartment in plush-and-upcoming suburbia, and children – all before thirty. What does that leave for achievement?

Millions of graduates in India no longer feel the necessity to study in order to learn. Studying to achieve a piece of paper which will guarantee a salary of about USD 400 per month right out of university is enough of an achievement in life. The corporate ladder, one that only goes up to the age of 40 (if you’re lucky!), a semi-prestigious MBA, and a couple of jaunts to America, is an extremely beguiling option. Everyone needs a BlackBerry, not just the Director. Everyone needs the latest laptop, not just the CEO. Everyone must be dressed in the first flush of fashion, not just the supermodels at the India Fashion Week. Why?

No – I am not one for abstinence. I don’t advocate a tree-hugging, vegan lifestyle, nor do I practice one myself. But I do question the necessity of 40-inch plasma screen television sets with Bose speakers on 10 year payment plans in bachelor pads owned by 20-somethings, who can’t recall the lessons of final term in their degree courses. I do question women who claim a right to higher education, only to turn into non-desperate housewives. I do question parenting skills that fail to teach children that “pocket money” refers to money earned for the pocket rather than money in Dad’s pocket.

It is one thing to be able to afford a Bentley, and a completely different issue to drive one. Wisdom then, may lie, in knowing when the former is enough and when the latter is a prerogative.