Used to seeing westerners being given preference wherever they go, I must say I relish the pleasure of the boot being on the other foot.

It is difficult to escape India, here. Hindi films, Bollywood melodies, tandoori on the menu. As Aunohita Mojumdar finds to her amusement, just being Indian becomes a calling card in Kabul

The airplane banks steeply, flying into Kabul airport ringed by hills, hovers briefly over the carcasses of burnt aircraft, relics of the war and the gleaming New Age apparatus of the international troops and lands. Kabul 2003 is very different from the bombed out city I remember from two years ago. There is bustle on the streets, construction work everywhere. There are restaurants, a cinema and many many women without the blue burkha, an ubiquitous symbol of Afghanistan in photographs of the country. In fact, under the demure headscarf worn in public, urban educated women seem far more fashion conscious. Crimped curls, permed hair, bright lipstick and skirts, albeit ankle length. I feel frumpy in my salwar kurtas chosen for their inconspicuous value, the trademark of a serious journalist, or so I like to think. I am sharing a house with two western colleagues in Kabul’s upmarket Wazir Akbar Khan. The ‘ghetto’, remarks John West, a former Reuters correspondent who is in Afghanistan with Internews, training local journalists, setting up radio stations.

They are everywhere. Kabul is choc-a-bloc with expatriates. There is scarcely any major street without a couple of multinational offices. Localities are now known by these offices, I discover. A long-winded conversation with a taxi driver in which I try to explain the whereabouts of the headquarters of the International Security Assistance Force for Afghanistan, ends with the driver exclaiming in exasperation: "Oh! ISAF!" One meets them everywhere. Aid workers from the UN and other multinational agencies, some of which I have never heard of and probably will never again outside Afghanistan. There is some resentment at the culture of affluence this has spawned. The saying goes: ‘First there was Communism, then there was Talibanism and now there is NGOism.’ Most of those I meet seem very involved with their work, genuinely concerned about the country, though not always in agreement with the policies being formulated by the international donor community. Besides, being an aid worker here is no longer an enviable job. Easy targets, many have been killed in recent months and the international agencies are restricting their activities in some provinces in the country.

In Kabul though, life appears normal. Apart from the troop presence and the high security checks in offices, there is no sense that this is a country that is still fighting a war, albeit one declared closed by the international community (read the US.) Only the high-walled facades of buildings in upper and middle class Kabul are a giveaway. There are no welcoming gates, no nameplates, rarely are there house numbers, with anonymity providing the best security. But step inside these walls and it is a different world. Well-tended gardens, trees of pomegranates, vines of grapes, birds. Even the Afghan ambassador to India, Masood Khalili (who is in Kabul for the death anniversary of Afghanistan’s most respected military strategist, Commander Masood), bemoans the dust on his vines. It was not there before, he says.

Before, that is, the 23 years of war which denuded the green hills of Kabul, bringing down great swathes of dust into the city. There is no escape from it, though Kabul’s denizens do not seem perturbed. They carry their staple diet, the naan, uncovered in bare hands around the city. The naan is not cooked at home but in the innumerable tandoors dotting the city from where it is carried back, cradled in arms like a sheaf of books. My middle class Indian soul cringes at this display of a lack of hygiene but by mealtime, with the delicious smells from the kitchen of our cook, Qudrat, wafting up to us, this squeamishness soon passes. By now, Kabul has more to offer than just Afghan food. Thai, Italian, Iranian is the extent of my exploration — and of course Indian!

It is in fact difficult to escape India in Kabul. Everywhere you go there is Indian music — Bollywood songs, that is. Whether it is the tune on the mobile phone of Javed the interpreter, or at the reception of Everest Guest house, in shops and in every taxi. I am bombarded by the Afghans’ extensive knowledge of Hindi movies. Names of films I have never heard of, film actors who I don’t watch. Several times I am asked if I know the stars. My confession that I have never laid eyes on one, classifies me a failure. Mumbai is definitely the number one Indian stop for those who want to go to that country. Hindi movies play to packed houses. Amazing that this could happen in a place where 90 per cent of the people don’t understand Hindi or Urdu. Conversations centre around the word ‘Hindustani’, accompanied by much gesticulation and wide smiles. It is enough. The word is a passport — it opens doors, hearts and minds.

"If I hadn’t seen it for myself, I would have dismissed it as MEA propaganda," I tell the Indian ambassador, Vivek Katju, an old adversary from South Block. He is delighted at this apparent admission of past folly and is soon introducing me around as the prodigal returned. Transient perhaps but the warmth for Indians is palpable, whether it is in government or civilian life. This is not the restrained politeness towards a foreigner or the hope of a tip. India is wonderful and they want you to know that they know. Movies! Wonderful. Indian government! Wonderful. They have got airplanes and buses from India. My natural cynicism about friendships between countries, about my own country, crumbles, faced with this onslaught. I suddenly understand what a citizen of the first world must feel like, welcomed everywhere purely on the basis of his or her nationality. Like westerners in India often are, except that I don’t even have the dollars that are in part responsible. In fact, I even manage to convince a group of boys begging outside the Lai Thai restaurant that they shouldn’t ask me for money because I come from a country as poor as theirs where the economy runs on the rupee rather than the dollar. This basic tenet of economics goes down well and they bid me a cheerful goodbye in ‘Hindustani’, dropping their faux American accents.

Indians are definitely the reigning flavour here and I learn to turn it to advantage. I single myself out from other foreigners. In Chicken Street, which caters to every whim of the tourist, I demand rupee prices and get away with it! In government offices, I get access where other correspondents don’t. Used to seeing westerners being given preference wherever they go, I must say I relish the pleasure of the boot being on the other foot. I mutate into a TV journalist and interview the foreign minister, the commerce minister and the defence minister. It is only later, after my western colleagues draw a collective gasp, that I realise my luck. "You interviewed Fahim! He never gives interviews." I brandish my Indian identity, unashamedly.

I would love to stay on. This place is a goldmine of stories — after all, I am seeing a country build itself, its institutions, its civil society. But dollars fly off fingers, here. The city still emulates a war economy especially while catering to the needs of the large body of foreign correspondents. But home beckons. I leave, carrying back with me some almonds(de rigueur), some music in one of the local languages, Daari and the conviction that Afghanistan is the right place for an Indian journalist to be in right now.

[After 14 years of working with different newspapers, Aunohita Mojumdar quit her job as diplomatic correspondent of The Times of India last year, hoping to travel and write. She made Kabul her first stop in her freelance career and realised that "When you see people in Afghanistan, the trivialities of your own life seem quite insignificant."]