Ever since Herodotus reported that it was home to gold-digging ants, travelers have been intrigued by India in all its beguiling complexity. This superb anthology gives us some of the best fiction, nonfiction, and poetry that has been written about the world’s second most populous nation over the past two centuries. From Mark Twain’s puzzled fascination with Indian castes and customs, to Allen Ginsberg’s awe at the country’s spiritual and natural splendors, or from J. R. Ackerley’s delightful recollections of his visits with an eccentric gay Maharajah, to Gore Vidal’s unforgettable scene in his novel Creation, in which his character finally meets the Buddha and is bewildered–all twenty-five selections in India in Mind reveal a place that evokes, in the traveler, reactions ranging from fear and perplexity to astonishment and wonder. Edited and with an introduction and chapter notes by the award-winning novelist Pankaj Mishra, India in Mind is a marvel of sympathy, sensitivity, and perception, not to mention outstanding writing. From the Trade Paperback edition.

When thinking of India, it is hard not to think of caste. In academic and common parlance alike, caste has become a central symbol for India, marking it as fundamentally different from other places while expressing its essence. Nicholas Dirks argues that caste is, in fact, neither an unchanged survival of ancient India nor a single system that reflects a core cultural value. Rather than a basic expression of Indian tradition, caste is a modern phenomenon--the product of a concrete historical encounter between India and British colonial rule. Dirks does not contend that caste was invented by the British. But under British domination caste did become a single term capable of naming and above all subsuming India's diverse forms of social identity and organization. Dirks traces the career of caste from the medieval kingdoms of southern India to the textual traces of early colonial archives; from the commentaries of an eighteenth-century Jesuit to the enumerative obsessions of the late-nineteenth-century census; from the ethnographic writings of colonial administrators to those of twentieth-century Indian scholars seeking to rescue ethnography from its colonial legacy. The book also surveys the rise of caste politics in the twentieth century, focusing in particular on the emergence of caste-based movements that have threatened nationalist consensus. Castes of Mind is an ambitious book, written by an accomplished scholar with a rare mastery of centuries of Indian history and anthropology. It uses the idea of caste as the basis for a magisterial history of modern India. And in making a powerful case that the colonial past continues to haunt the Indian present, it makes an important contribution to current postcolonial theory and scholarship on contemporary Indian politics.

How does one record an extraordinary time? Confined to his Delhi apartment, Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee unravels the intimate paradoxes of life he encounters in the first weeks of a global pandemic. His stories about local fish sellers, gardeners, barbers and lovers merge with his concerns for the exodus of migrant labourers, the challenges faced by health workers, and a mother braving checkposts to bring her son home. Drawing inspiration from contemporary literature and cinema, The Town Slowly Empties is a unique window on a world desperate for love, care and hope. Manash is our Everyman, urging us to slow down and mend our broken ties with nature. Written with rare candour and elegance, this meditative book is a compelling account of the human condition that soars high above the empty streets.

After more than fifty years of modernisation, India is far from being made over in the image of a western country... It often poses hard challenges. The reactions it evokes are complex, ranging from awe and wonder to repulsion and rejections. India in Mind is a stunning collection of the diverse and vivid reactions that the subcontinent has evoked in the greatest writers of our time. Its twenty five pieces range from fiction and non fiction to poetry, lighting up a thousand forgotten details about the last hundred and fifty years of a changing India.

A richly insightful account of one of the most significant transformations in the world today. Dheeraj Sinha's intelligence vividly illuminates the intersection of culture and commerce in New India. Adam Morgan Founder eatbigfish Among the many books I have read on the cultural evolution taking place in India, this is perhaps the most insightful. It does not just map mindset changes; it does so with the certainty of a person who has lived the changes as much as he has witnessed them. Every marketeer should keep this book on his office desk as a ready reckoner. Ranjan Kapur Country Manager – India WPP India in many ways is a "Nation of Nations." So much heterogeneity and hence complexity in understanding consumers and consumerism. Dheeraj has done a commendable job in peeling off the layers from the onion—creating frameworks and providing very relatable examples to understand the culture. For instance, Dheeraj has used Bollywood as an effective mirror to portray societal changes. Consumer India is a must-read for those who want to understand the cultural evolution of India with its nuances. Rajesh Jejurikar Chief Executive - Automotive Division Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. A labor of love. For years, I have marveled at how Dheeraj's inquisitive brain continuously churns away to make meaning of everything he observes. His writing simultaneously reflects him as a "sutradaar" telling the captivating story of a changing India, even as it does so with the unbiased and expert credentials of the "computerji" he describes here. Dheeraj insightfully marries the rapid changes he chronicles with the assimilative fabric of India; where "and" trumps "or." Against the cliché "change is the only constant," he underlines that in India, change works with the constant. Enjoy the ride on Dheeraj's time machine! Prasad Narasimhan Managing Partner, Asia Brandgym

In "the very best book about Hindu mythology that anyone has ever written" (The New Republic) Calasso plunges Western readers into the mind of ancient India. He begins with a mystery: Why is the most important god in the Rg Veda, the oldest of India's sacred texts, known by a secret name—"Ka," or Who? What ensues is not an explanation, but an unveiling. Here are the stories of the creation of mind and matter; of the origin of Death, of the first sexual union and the first parricide. We learn why Siva must carry his father's skull, why snakes have forked tongues, and why, as part of a certain sacrifice, the king's wife must copulate with a dead horse. A tour de force of scholarship and seduction, Ka is irresistible.