INDIA CALLING
An Intimate Portrait of a Nation’s Remaking
Published in the United States by Times Books, an imprint of Henry Holt and Company, in January, 2011. Order today from Amazon, Borders or Barnes & Noble. And available in India from HarperCollins and in Australia from Black Inc.
Anand Giridharadas
Reversing his parents’ immigrant path, a young American-born writer returns to India and discovers an old country making itself new
Anand Giridharadas sensed something afoot as his plane from America prepared to land in Bombay. An elderly passenger looked at him and said, “We’re all trying to go that way,” pointing to the rear. “You, you’re going this way?”
Giridharadas was returning to the land of his ancestors, amid an unlikely economic boom. But he was interested less in its gold rush than in its cultural upheaval, as a new generation has sought to reconcile old traditions and customs with new ambitions and dreams.
In India Calling, Giridharadas brings to life the people and the dilemmas of India today, through the prism of his émigré family history and his childhood memories of India. He introduces us to entrepreneurs, radicals, industrialists, and religious seekers, but, most of all, to Indian families. He shows how parents and children, husbands and wives, cousins and siblings are reinventing relationships, bending the meaning of Indianness, and enduring the pangs of the old birthing the new.
Through their stories, and his own, he paints an intimate portrait of a country becoming modern while striving to remain itself.
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Reviews of INDIA CALLING
“India Calling is a fine book, elegant, self-aware and unafraid of contradictions and complexity. Giridharadas captures fundamental changes in the nature of family and class relationships and the very idea of what it means to be an Indian.”–The New York Times Book Review
“Capturing the monumental changes sweeping India is a feat many attempt but few manage. . . . In India Calling, Giridharadas has written the best of this now established genre. . . . A finely observed portrait of the modern nation.”–Financial Times
“[A] readable, intriguing book. . . . [Giridharadas is] a marvelous journalist–intrepid, easy to like, curious. . . . India Calling connects us to a new India, and an engaging new voice.”–Cleveland Plain Dealer
“A beautifully written, intelligent look at the cultural history and changes of India. . . . The book [is] worth reading because of [Giridharadas's] skill as a writer. . . . Giridharadas publishes sentences and paragraphs that are exquisitely worded, to the point of becoming downright memorable, and certainly quotable.”–Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Giridharadas successfully uses his first-hand account of self-discovery to illustrate a larger picture of empowering change.”–Christian Science Monitor
“In this fresh, clear-eyed account of his stay, the author writes eloquently of how he came upon a very different place from where his parents grew up.”–Kirkus Reviews
“Well thought out . . . Like a morality play, each chapter reflects a different inner quality, while woven together in the narrative are bits of the author’s family history. The portraits . . . show the myriad ways in which India has changed and yet remains the same.”–Library Journal
“Rarely has an author deciphered the Indian enigma the way Anand Giridharadas does in India Calling. By lucidly portraying the country’s real locomotive–its vast and populous youth–he provides the most timely and elegant guide to perhaps the most important next generation in the world.”–Parag Khanna, author of The Second World and How to Run the World
“Anand Giridharadas is more than just a widely admired journalist; with India Calling he has transformed into a fluent, witty, and intelligent writer. His very personal and perceptive look at the new India is a memorable debut, full of insight and diversion.”–William Dalrymple, author of Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India
“Anand Giridharadas has become one of the finest analysts of contemporary India. In India Calling, he has produced an engrossing and acutely observed appreciation of a country that is at once old and new–an enormously readable book in which everyone, at home in India or abroad, will find something distinctive and altogether challenging.”–Amartya Sen, Nobel laureate in economics
“The emergence of a more dynamic India has been widely observed. Less well understood are the myriad reinventions that make the New India so exciting. In India Calling, Anand Giridharadas renders this change on an intimate scale with a tapestry of keenly observed stories about the changing dreams and frustrations of all walks of Indians–and his own. Savvy and often moving, India Calling is for those who prefer the view from the ground than from thirty thousand feet.”–Edward Luce, author of In Spite of the Gods: The Rise of Modern India
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An excerpt from INDIA CALLING:
India was erupting in dreams.
It was the dream to own a microwave or refrigerator or motorcycle. The dream of a roof of one’s own. The dream to break caste. The dream to bring a cellphone to every Indian with someone to call. The dream to buy out businesses in the kingdom that once colonized you. The dream to marry for love, all the complicated family considerations be damned. The dream to become rich. The dream to overthrow the rich in revolution.
These dreams were by turns farsighted and farfetched, practical and impractical, generous and selfish, principled and cynical, focused and vague, passionate and drifting. They were tempered by countervailing dreams and, as ever in India, by the dogged pull of the past. Some were changing India palpably; others had no chance from the beginning. But that was never the point. It was the very existence of such brazen, unapologetic dreams, and their diffuse flowering from one end of India to the other, that so decisively separated the present from the past – and separated the India my parents had left from the India to which I had now returned.
The Indian revolution was within. It was a revolution in private life, in the tenor of emotions and the nature of human relationships. The very fabric of Indianness – the meaning of being a husband or wife, a factory owner or factory worker, a mother-in-law or daughter-in-law, a student or teacher – was slowly, gently unraveling by the force of these dreams, and allowing itself to be woven in new ways.
You can read an excerpt from the first chapter by clicking here, or another excerpt, published in The New York Times Magazine, here.
hi! anand,love your book but i ges i’ll have to sit and read all over.as for my country Nigeria,i know we will get there someday.thanks
Nigeria is 51 today. I am very positive about my country. The transformation has began. Other countries like India have transformed, so can Nigeria.
Anand your presentation at the Platform is yet another wake up call. It made me say again. Yes, I can!
Wow.This is the second time I am listening to Mr. Giridharadas in Lagos.I will definitely read this book in the near future.I hope to write some sort of “Nigeria Calling”
I want to really thank u sir for coming to my country Nigeria on this of our independence!your speech was exactly on point.The state of my country Nigeria is really deteriorating as the days goes by and like u said sir,”the past is just a gentle suggestion and not a command”great quote from u sir!
1960 earmarked the start of independent Nigeria though we have been living together for a long time. The second independence has started and the state of the mind of the citizenry changing to changing their predestined destiny to a self made one and taking care of self: not selfish but at thesame time selfless. Nigeria is Great and we’ll make it right.
The Nigerian independence was a legislative coup by the leadership at that time to gain control of the country and use the existing framework for dependence to assert themselves and their interests over Nigerians.at 51years it’s still the same leadership such that we have a classic case of state capture, meanwhile the liberation of self will enlighten Nigerians see through the smokescreen that the leadership has created, this might take a long time but it is inevitable, because traditional and social media preaches the ideal to the mind and that sets the mind free.
Anand, your presentation was very informative. it really was a wake-up call, truly an independence day gift. And Nigeria, this is out time for change.
Hi Anand,
Am reading your book now, and must thank you for taking the effort to write and publish this. Loving it so far, don’t want it to end. Very apt observations about the changing face(s) of India and Indians. A great read (so far)…
Hi Anand,
‘India Calling’ is a justification of your name.Nearly after 8 months of its publication, I had the opportunity to read this wonderful book. This masterpiece connects. Foreigners with Indians. Indians with Indians.In their voyages to self discovery.It is refreshing.Illuminating.
Wish you good luck.
Today I was just trying to get something good on myTV and heard you on TVO about India’s corruption. You spoke very true.
This is one of the reasons, I decided to migrate to Canada. I miss my family,who is there in India. But I am frustrated with the systems. Did not pay bribe for a recognition,which I deserved.
I would love to see India free of corruption..
Good luck with your efforts .
GK
Great work Anand!
India Calling is a great book. I haven’t read it all, just the first chapter. But it really connects with people who have left India and those who also have left their countries in search to earn money, education or in most cases marriages. I am looking forward to read the book and I am sure it offers a lot. I just want to congratulate on this wonderful journey of yours and just so you know that your observations at looking things is very innovative….
Beautifully written book.so aptly and realistically echoes what most Indians living away from home feel.I personally feel it’s a much better version of jhumpa lahiri’s namesake.
Keep up the good work.
KRATI
Born in Ottawa Canada and raised in Europe, I am inspired by ‘India Calling’ and going there. I work as a patent and intellectual property engineer.
I seek help from like minded professionals to connect please by way of my below e-mail.
I have decided to go into the India energy business.
1. Retailing a nano-tech. based engine additive re: 25-30 % savings on fuel.
2. A building and facilities mgmt. green IT system to optimise energy use with similar savings as above.
3. A new and novel generator for domestic use.
The three tie in together.
Seeking like minded folks to build up a social network, friends to hang-out with in Delhi & Bombay.
Pavan Joshi
–
patent + neer at gmail dot com
I just spent three years living in India as a Voluntary Overseas Volunteer in New Delhi. I love India and I wanted to go back but was denied a visa. I’m an American and feel the power of India. I thought that the book was perfect in describing what is going on and confirmed everything that I experienced. Thank you! Mike
Anand your intrinsic analysis in the book INDIA CALLING is unassialable ,your practical dept unmistakable and your logic commendable.We love you from Nigeria.
a sensitive mind that observes and captures the changing phenomenon in India remarkably….and very well articulated in words.
what dilutes the impact thouhg……. are following two uncalled for apscetds of the book:
1)there are oft heard and beatne to death the ubiquitious observations and length narrtaives of foreign born desi writers….. on how indians in india love, eat, wash, drink, casteism…..etc…..we’ve heard it so many times.
2)AND that my mummy, papa, nana , nani are diffrent……from the average desi …..in a superior sense…more liberal, westenrized….
these couple of aberartions turna na otehr wise excellent subject and narrative into a moderatley good one
regards
What a great story! My daughter was born in the US and is now living in India preparing to marry an Indian. I am of Italian descent whose grandparents came from Italy. I loved the clarity of the story and the lens that Anand views current India. When my husband and I visited India for the first time in 2010, we were captivated by the absolute blend of old and new. We could feel the energy that Anand so eloquently describes in his book. We developed a true respect and admiration for Indian people. This book will draw the reader in and immerse them. Loved the book and looking forward to more from this author.The only other book I can compare this to is “Ciao America.”