India Becoming
A Portrait of Life in Modern India
Akash Kapur - Author
ISBN 9781594486531 | 336 pages | 05 Mar 2013 | Riverhead | 8.26 x 5.23in | 18 - AND UP
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A New Republic Editors' and Writers' Pick 2012 A New Yorker Contributors' Pick 2012 A Newsweek "Must Read on Modern India" “For people who savored Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers.”—Evan Osnos, newyorker.com A portrait of the incredible change and economic development of modern India, and of social and national transformation there told through individual lives Raised in India, and educated in the U.S., Akash Kapur returned to India in 2003 to raise a family. What he found was an ancient country in transition. In search of the life that he and his wife want to lead, he meets an array of Indians who teach him much about the realities of this changed country: an old landowner sees his rural village destroyed by real estate developments, and crime and corruption breaking down the feudal authority; a 21-year-old single woman and a 35-year-old divorcee exploring the new cultural allowances for women; and a young gay man coming to terms with his sexual identity – something never allowed him a generation ago. As Akash and his wife struggle to find the right balance between growth and modernity and the simplicity and purity they had known from the Indian countryside a decade ago, they ultimately find a country that “has begun to dream.” But also one that may be moving away too quickly from the valuable ways in which it is different. “This takes, wisely, a humble approach: instead of trying to encapsulate the entirety of India’s changes, it follows a few lives along the idiosyncratic ways they develop. For people who savored Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers.”—Evan Osnos, newyorker.com "[A] lucid, balanced new book . . . Kapur is determinedly fair-minded, neither an apologist nor a scold, and he is a wonderfully empathetic listener.”—The New York Times Book Review “Kapur’s strength is in letting his characters display the ambiguity that many feel about the ongoing change. … Kapur offers a corrective to a simplistic “new, happy narrative” of a rising India.”—The Economist “There are many virtues of Akash Kapur’s beautifully sketched portrait of modern India….The book inhabits parts of India we do not explore often enough, the India of the south and of the transforming countryside. Mostly, it takes us into the minds and hearts of Indians seeking to adapt to a society changing at disconcerting speed…. The book reads like a novel…Kapur’s skill is to get people talking and to weave their stories into a necessarily messy debate about India’s future.”—The Financial Times "Impressively lucid and searching . . . In his clarity, sympathy and impeccably sculpted prose, Kapur often summons the spirit of V.S. Naipaul." —Pico Iyer, Time “Kapur himself, with one leg in the East and one in the West, is an excellent ambassador to explain the dynamic of change in India, what the nation is becoming. Any reader who would like to understand the country better would do well to give him a read.”—Daily Beast "Kapur has a fluency that outsiders—even those of us with a genetic tie—lack”—The New Republic "This is a remarkably absorbing account of an India in transition - full of challenges and contradictions, but also of expectations, hope, and ultimately optimism."-Amartya Sen "A wonderful writer: a courageously clear-eyed observer, an astute listener, a masterful portraitist, and a gripping storyteller. Kapur's voice is as sure and as intimate as his subject is chaotic and immense, and he proves himself the perfect guide to the enthralling promise and the terrifying menace of a society in the throes of colossal, epochal, all-encompassing change."-Philip Gourevitch, author of We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Your Families "Marvelous . . . Kapur shows how the old rural cycle of the south Indian village depicted and romanticized by R. K. Narayan is fracturing and breaking apart to reveal a very new, more unstable world where the old certainties are disappearing and everything is up for grabs. Sharp-eyed, insightful, skillfully sketched and beautifully written, India Becoming is the remarkable debut of a distinctive new talent."-William Dalrymple, author of Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India "Akash Kapur lives in and writes out of an India that few writers venture into. Curious, suspicious of received wisdom, and intellectually resourceful, [Kapur is] one of the most reliable observers of the New India."-Pankaj Mishra, author of Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond "Through a series of deft character sketches, Akash Kapur captures the contradictions of life in modern India-between city and country, technology and aesthetics, development and the environment, greed and selflessness, individual fulfillment and community obligation. His writing is fresh and vivid; his perspective empathetic and appealingly non-judgmental."-Ramachandra Guha, author of India after Gandhi "Beautifully written . . . Akash Kapur celebrates the gains and mourns the losses, conveying a complex story through the ups and downs of the lives of some fascinating individual women and men."-Kwame Anthony Appiah, author of Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers "India today is in the midst of profound change and Akash Kapur captures the impact of that change on the lives of ordinary Indians with a narrative that avoids all clichés, platitudes, and simplifications."-Gurcharan Das, author of India Unbound “A fascinating look at the transformation of India, with broader lessons on the upside and downside of progress.”—Booklist (starred) I left India in 1991, and returned twelve years later. I left, as so many had before me, in search of better opportunities. The India of my youth—and especially rural South India, where I grew up—felt cut off, isolated from the world. America, where I spent most of my time abroad, was at the center of the world. By the time I returned, things had in many ways come full circle. America felt weighed down, burdened by a troubled war in Iraq and a sputtering economy. India’s economy, on the other hand, was one of the fastest growing in the world. Surveys regularly showed that its population was one of the most optimistic. It was as though India had co-opted the energy and optimism, the sense of possibility, that had once drawn so many to America. India’s transformation was exciting, but it could also be confusing. Einstein once wrote of America that it was a country always becoming, never being. Now, I felt that same energy, that sense of forward momentum, in India. But this is an ancient, complex culture; India was changing so fast, and in so many different ways, that it was hard to know what to make of it all. Sometimes I wondered just what the country was becoming. In the villages near my home, the transformation was apparent. Farmers who had once ridden to their fields in bullock carts now drove shiny tractors; concrete structures were replacing thatch huts. But alongside this evidence of new prosperity, the seamier side of development was evident, too. The villages were wracked by environmental depredation, and torn apart by new forms of inequality. A social and cultural fabric built up over centuries and millennia was suddenly unraveling. The process of change was messy, at times even frightening. This book represents my effort to make sense of it all. For almost five years, I have traveled the country, meeting people, getting to know their families and lives. These people have taught me a lot. They have shown me just how complex is this country, how layered and nuanced is the transition it is currently undergoing. I have learned to see—and to love--this country in a new way. In many ways, after more than a decade away, writing this book has brought me home. |
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