Growing urbanisation in India has resulted in people getting inevitably exposed to new and different cultural experiences. Eventually, it makes people, who until then regarded themselves as natives of a place, loosen their grip on their local cultural identity and embrace a global civic identity. It has become routine for Tamil youth from the hinterland to migrate to the urban centre of Chennai, seemingly aspiring to participate not only in its growth story but also in embracing the lifestyle changes that come with it. Kwame Anthony Appiah has illustrated how in urban environments people encounter commercial artefacts and establishments that bring other cultures into close proximity to their own. Such a shift happens mainly through a rapid process of urbanisation that includes migration, lifestyle changes and advancement in communication technologies. A cosmopolitan, according to Appiah, is someone who has learnt to live with their roots in a wider world, with mutual respect for other traditions. He suggested a co-existence of modernist values with respect for tradition among people in a globalized world. Moving forward, the intermingling of diverse cultures is also about the differences that emerge among them. As a result, natives often emphasise the uniqueness of their own culture against universalist values. This process is identified as ‘tribalism’ in anthropological terms or ‘localisation’ in sociological terms. Further, the pursuit of universalist values in a modern world has come to imply moving from the anthropocentric, that is, where human lives are deemed more important, to an ecocentric worldview, where all lives are deemed equal.