ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

There are two ways to imagine the making of a book. The first pictures a solitary figure, hunched over his desk, silencing all other voices so that his own might speak: the writer as a monk with words. The second sees writing as a social act: social because the writer has no words without everything written before, without the people who catalyze his ideas, without the stories that others tell him, without the roots that give him his own story. There is some truth in the first vision; many days of the past many years were spent in that way. But if these years taught me anything, it is that a book cannot be written alone.

I came to Bombay knowing almost nobody and left with a family. So many ideas in this work were born not in interviews I did or books I read but in late-night conversations with my friends. We found ourselves in a dizzying Indian moment, and together we sought to understand it: Prashant Agrawal, Shweta Bagai, Sheetal Baliga, Beenu Bawa, Anu Duggal, Scott Eells, Nasha Fitter, Fabio Fonseca, Amar Goel, Komal Goel, Rohan Gopaldas, Christie Johnston, Aurélie Khattau, Nikhil Khattau, Haani Khorakiwala, Priya Kishore, Anjalee Kohli, Ravi Krishnan, Anshuma Lal, Kunal Mehta, Salma Merchant, Nitin Nayar, Shuchi Pandya, Deepak Rajegowda, Jérôme Rouch-Sirech, Bandana Tewari, Divya Thakur, Raj Yerasi.

Urmila Jain made sure that I had food, a cell phone, and a hug when I first touched down. The endlessly creative Morarji family provided me with beautiful spaces for writing, first in Bombay and then in Goa, where I wrote most of this book in the tree house of my gracious friends Kim Morarji and Di Cooper. Raul Rai and Simran Lal generously shared their sun-soaked Bombay apartment with me. The Deora family—Milind, Mukul, Hema, and Murli—helped me to get my bearings when I began as a correspondent and made sure that I met everyone in town.

Others helped me on my journey in ways too various to count: Gautam Adhikari, Ravi Agarwal, Luis Ernesto Araujo, Tom Ashbrook, K.B., Dominic Barton, Eric Bellman, Mahesh Bhatt, Alain de Botton, Elizabeth Bowie, Jennifer Brea, Daniela Cammack, Fiona Caulfield, Sudeep Chakravarti, Brahma Chellaney, Deepak Chopra, Stephen Cohen, Adam Cooper, Shobhaa Dé, Santosh Desai, Meenal Devani, Siddharth Dube, Andrea Echavarria, Antonio E’Costa, A.G., M.G., Adheet Gogate, David Grewal, Ramachandra Guha, Pooja Haldea, Dan Honig, Marline Israel, Nick Israel, Narendra Jadhav, Yogesh Kamdar, Sandeep Kapila, Kaavya Kasturirangan, Tarun Khanna, Naina Lal Kidwai, Rashid Kidwai, Shambhu Kumaran, Jhumpa Lahiri, Ellis Levine, Hillel Levine, Christopher Lydon, Kishore Mahbubani, David Malone, David McCraw, Jamal Mecklai, Pravina Mecklai, Sonny Mehta, Tanya Mendonsa, C. Raja Mohan, Tory Newmyer, Nandan Nilekani, Joe Nocera, Anuvab Pal, Ranjit Pandit, the Pandyas, Priyanka Pathak, Nandini Piramal and the Piramal family, Jairam Ramesh, Arundhati Roy, Michael Rubenstein, Dipti Salgaocar, Raj Salgaocar, Chiki Sarkar, Rajiv Sawhney, Jonathan Segal, Suhel Seth, Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi, Jayant Sinha, Ranu Sinha, Sree Sreenivasan, Ramesh Srinivasan, Chiara Superti, Ekta Thakur, Rajesh Thind, Ashish Tuteja, Loulou Van Damme, Ashutosh Varshney, Karishma Vaswani, Ravi Venkatesan, Ireena Vittal, the Wagles, Omar Wasow, Nora Young.

It would be most un-Indian not to honor my gurus, my teachers. At Sidwell Friends, Susan Banker, Dan Entwisle, Bryan Garman, Mark Reford, and Neal Tonken nourished an early romance with ideas and words. At the University of Michigan, Carl Cohen transcended the role of professor to become a friend and infected me with his love of creative argument. Mills Thornton taught me that history is nothing but the story of colliding perceptions. And Theodore Zeldin, more than any other teacher, made me a writer: after I read An Intimate History of Humanity and came to know him, it became clear to me that my life’s work would be to study other people. In India, Sudhir Kakar was my teacher first through books and then through friendship with him and his wife, Katha; few people think as searchingly about the character of modern India. At Harvard, Michael Sandel and Henry Louis Gates Jr. are thinkers who live to teach, and they make learning a thrill. Amartya Sen, who doesn’t just construct ideas about helping others but lives those ideas every day, has been a constant guide and friend, reading parts of the book, sharing long meals, and ever egging me on.

It is no small favor to read a friend’s manuscript in full, and so I will probably be mowing some lawns for a long time to come. I was indulged in this regard by my parents, my sister, and my Priya, about whom more later, but also by the wonderful John Blaxall, Deepa Narayan, and Jennifer Page. They edited, corrected, and suggested, and they made the work immeasurably better. Of course, I bear responsibility for the mistakes that remain.

I am deeply indebted to those who opened their lives to me for this book. It is an act of generosity that words cannot repay. In some cases, for obvious reasons, I changed the names and circumstances of particular people. Their stories, though, are entirely true. And a word on language: in certain cases, like Ravindra’s, the subject speaks in the hybrid dialect of Hinglish. I have generally printed the words exactly as they were uttered in order to preserve voice, sometimes at clarity’s expense. But on select occasions, where a word or phrase made a quotation hard to understand, I have translated a bit, nudging the language a little away from the Hindi pole of the Hinglish spectrum and toward the English end.

I have had extraordinary colleagues at The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune. Jill Abramson started me in journalism as a seventeen-year-old intern at the Times. On my first day, she mentioned casually that I should write articles, not just hang around; I haven’t stopped since. Her support has made this path possible. At the Trib, Walter Wells took a risk on me that I’ll never forget. Len Apcar, Jeanne Moore, and Alison Smale have edited me with wisdom, curiosity, and grace; they have made me a better writer week by week. My Times editors Marc Charney, Dave Smith, and Sam Tanenhaus are true fellow travelers, with a gift not just for working with what I have written but also for coaching and teaching and making me reach higher. I am indebted as well to Keith Bradsher, Susan Chira, Roger Cohen, Amelia Gentleman, Larry Ingrassia, Philip McClellan, Tim O’Brien, Jane Perlez, Somini Sengupta, Patrick Smith, Nick Stout, Heather Timmons, and Sheryl WuDunn.

Book writing takes some hand-holding, and I found myself surrounded by hands. Shashi Tharoor lent early enthusiasm and introduced me to my agent, Steve Wasserman, who has book pulp in his veins. We first met when this was a book about democracy, and he has seen it through its turns with patience and good cheer. He steered me to Paul Golob at Times Books, who has been a careful editor and generous cultivator of a young writer. I am also grateful to Alex Ward at the Times and to the marketing and publicity team at Henry Holt and Company. Michelle Daniel was a very meticulous and extra-mile-going copy editor. Simran Preet Gill and Sneha Singh, in Bombay, have served as skillful research assistants. And from the beginning to the end, Vrinda Condillac has been the fairy godmother of this book. She refined my thoughts, told me when to scrap them, and edited the resulting work with her flair for narrative energy.

Like so many Indians today, this book is bound to no one place. It was written in Bombay, Goa, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Colombia. In this new world, it is people, not places, that anchor you. I am blessed with my anchors. Priya is the only person in the world who has heard most of this book out loud. She wanted the words to sing, and so she listened to India Calling even before she read it, edited it, told me where to rewrite it, gave me new paths forward. She knows the stories deep within me, even when I forget, and inspires me to be a better writer and a better man. And then there are my oldest anchors: my Nanu and Nani, my Ammamma and late Thatha, my cousins and uncles and aunts, who make me feel proud to be Indian, who have taught me what it means to possess a past. And Mama and Papa and Rukmini: this one is for you. What words are there? You have given me life, and you give it again and again, through the darkness and the light. You are my music. Without you, I would not be.