Americans see India as a country mired in tradition, and are alarmed at news that it controls a weapon of mass destruction. But India's citizens see their country moving into the realities of the next century and in their world ancient rivals are more important than U.S. opinion. PNS Executive Editor Sandy Close just returned from India where she spent several days talking with a broad spectrum of Indians.

MUMBAI, INDIA -- The most surprising thing listening to Indians last week was how rarely the subject of nuclear bomb tests in their country and Pakistan came up. A visitor had to tweak it out.

"The tests are simply not a topic of dinner conversation," noted an Indian software engineer after a week of traveling through his homeland.

The international press headlined the subcontinent's nuclear rivalry. In India's regional press, the bomb blasts vied for space with other pressing concerns -- a hike in railway fares, power blackouts, the devaluation of the rupee. Washington's reactions to the tests made page 12 in the weekend edition of the Statesman -- just below reports on the plummeting Japanese sperm count and a new method for determining whether a snake bite is poisonous.

This is not to suggest that Indians are unaware or uninterested. On the contrary: A Times of India poll in 18 metropolitan areas just prior to Pakistan's tests found public approval running at 81 percent, down slightly from the 90 percent rate registered immediately after the tests. The day after Pakistan trumpeted news of its second test, the ruling BJP party revealed plans to build a Hindu temple on the site of the Indian blasts.

But while diplomats and politicians around the world expressed repugnance and shock over news that the subcontinent has crashed its way into the nuclear club, Indians seem to be taking it in stride. It is as if the tests merely confirmed how they had long imagined themselves -- as global players.

"We've known we had a nuclear capability for over a decade -- we're just bringing things out into the open," said Balu Pillai, a 28 year old communications manager for ZTV, a round the clock television channel launched in 1992.

For Pillai, the tests have less to do with shaping Indian consciousness than the television, which has given even the poorest a new appetite for consumer goods. While Pillai bemoans the fact that financial consideration outranks more traditional values -- a liquor store owner is now considered a more suitable marriage partner than a professor, for instance -- he also revels in the social life young people of his generation enjoy in bars and discos. On a 30 minute Saturday afternoon walk around his suburban neighborhood his cellular rang four times as friends made plans for the evening.

"Surprise, concern, pride," said Venkat Sohoni, CEO of a Swiss-based pharmaceutical firm, summing up his reactions to the tests. He recognizes that a swadeshi movement is stirring, determined to drive the multinationals out of the country -- mobs in Gujarat stoned Coca Cola bottlers and Ben & Jerry's outlets last week -- but is unworried. "India is on the move now; there's no going backwards. " His Swiss colleagues see India as a more reliable partner over the long term than China.

Preparing a traditional meal in a cramped apartment while her 80-year-old husband, a Sanskrit scholar, watched a Ramayana story on television, Parvathi Pavanan nodded her head and smiled when asked whether she supported the nuclear tests. Her daughter, the production editor of a Marxist-oriented scholarly journal, agreed -- along with Pavanan's sister, a housewife visiting from Kerala, and her niece from Madras. "The Nair women consensus," joked Krishnan Raj, publisher of the journal, pointing to the women clustered around the stove.

In her air-conditioned Mumbai apartment 30 kilometers away, Neera Sohoni, a feminist scholar and Venkat Sohoni's wife, is more emphatic. Impatient with Congress party corruption, she voted for the BJP and applauds India's nuclear stance because it means the world can no longer take her country for granted.

A sole critic of the tests encountered during several days of interviews was R.L. Goyal, who produces textile chemical dyes for export. "Breaking the nuclear monopoly is not our priority -- feeding the people is," he explained. In five years, he predicted, Indians will see the true costs of the tests as they see how government has funds away from infrastructure development to blunt the impact of sanctions. "What will the bomb blasts do for the man in the village to lift his misery?"

But Maduvan Pillai, a freshly minted college graduate who writes a weekly column for Mumbai's Midday, found no merit in this argument. "When have the people ever looked to the government to feed them? What's more important, the government is giving the people a sense of pride."

Like all others interviewed, Maduvan saw no reason to worry about a nuclear show-down with Pakistan. "The government needed to conduct the tests after India's," reasoned Venkat Sahoni, "otherwise it would have fallen." Indeed, the Pakistan Prime Minister's rationale, reprinted in the Indian press, seemed to resonate with India's own logic. "Today we have proved our credibility."

China looms as a greater concern. Some Indian commentators see a threat of Chinese domination over Asia, and note that the United States seems prepared to give its blessing to such a situation. What did the American visitor think about the Chinese? the CEO asked. Why, the college grad wanted to know, was the U .S. so eager to accept China as a nuclear ally and quick to condemn India despite India's being the world's largest democracy.

A detailed article in The Hindu, a national newspaper, exploring West Asia's reactions to the Indian (Hindu) and Pakistani (Islamic) bombs concluded that the next country to pass the nuclear threshold would be Iran.

In the post-Cold War universe of ordinary Indians, ancient rivals -- China, Iran, the Arab world -- are the primary reference points. The U.S. presence remains pervasive, but more as a cultural force than as a superpower or even historical ally.

At 2 a.m. in the visitor's lounge in Delhi's international airport, a Sikh family patiently watches Charlie's Angels on TV while waiting for a flight -- to where? No one spoke English.

Suddenly the face of President Bill Clinton appeared, commenting on the Indian-Pakistan nuclear tests. An American president, who ran for re-election on the promise of building the bridge into the next century, confessed he "couldn't believe we're entering the 21st century repeating the worst mistake of the 20th."

Indians, for their part, already seem to have crossed the bridge, and the view from the other side couldn't seem more different.