India Calling

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 was 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 more interested in India's 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, introducing us to entrepreneurs, radicals, industrialists, and religious seekers, and, most of all, to Indian families. Through their stories, and his own, he paints an intimate portrait of a country becoming modern while striving to remain itself.

Praise for India Calling

"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

"[A] smart, evocative and sharply observed memoir . . . Giridharadas's narrative gusto makes the familiar fresh." —The Wall Street Journal

"[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." —The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)