But a kind of modernity is coming to India, with a Western emphasis on regimentation and formalization. The flight attendants now walk down the aisles carrying out their detailed training, offering food if you want it, moving on if you don’t. A new breed of companies resists hiring the cousins and friends of senior managers; they insist on children’s educating themselves and working hard in order to inherit the family business. More and more people faithfully pay their taxes.

And yet now when I visit America, where I grew up until moving to India six years ago, I wonder if this is where India is bound: a society that is fairer and more ordered, but in which something of the warmth of improvisation is gone.

It is especially visible in customer-service relationships. In India, those relationships are often hierarchical and tinged by a blend of fear and reverence in the service giver’s eyes. But India has not yet crossed that line beyond which such transactions lose their human aspect.

Moving through America, I was struck again and again by the superficial politesse and underlying coldness of so many customer-service moments.

In restaurants, the waiters have become performers, not merely hosts seeking to tend to a guest: “May I ask if it’s your first time dining with us? Wow! Well, it’s wonderful to have you here. Can I begin by telling you about our wonderful specials?” And then the sparkling-or-still-water dilemma, and the practiced Disappointed Look when you want tap water. And the 50-percent-too-elaborate “Are you finished enjoying that?”

Language was invented to connect us, but it sometimes drives us apart.

You see it, too, when you fly. There are the airport-security officials who grimace at you with a “What? You think you’re better than me?” face when you ask them to replenish the stack of trays. Or you finish your glass of water on a flight, and now you wonder about asking the flight attendant, who is now just moving forward to the next row, for a refill. She might do it; but she might, glaring at you in the manner of a headmistress, tell you that she has to serve other customers first and that she will get to you, sir, thank you very much.

And she is right, in a way. Why should you drink twice before others drink once? The attendant’s fidelity to her training is impeccable.