India captured in a billion shades

The Indian Consul General in Sydney Amit Dasgupta has done it again, second year in a row.

He has just released a new book, India for a Billion Reasons (Wisdom Tree). It is not however, a work of fiction like his previous releases In the Land of the Blue Jasmine (Star) and Indian By Choice (Wisdom Tree). You could call it a coffee table book - but with a difference - that captures the country in all its colourful glory, chronicling its culture, heritage, plurality, ethos and its multidimensional progress.

The book is a compilation of essays interspersed with lavish and evocative photographs contributed by writers like Atri Bhattacharya, Anita Ratnam, Anjum Katyal, Meenakshi Shedde, Harpal Singh Bedi, Rohan Mukherjee, Bibek Debroy, Tarun Basu, L.K. Sharma and several others on socio-cultural aspects of India. It provides a wonderful feel of the quintessential “Indian identity”, in terms of its qualities of hospitality, music, art, craft, cinema, dance, literature, food, sports, politics, economy, press, and the transition from tradition to modernity.

Coming at a time when there has been a dramatic surge of interest in India, …Billion Reasons is driven primarily by the prediction that by 2040 it would become the third largest economy after the US and China.

“While across the globe major economies struggled with low growth rates and continued predictions of sluggish economic performance, the Indian economy defied all expectations and consistently clocked eight percent growth with credible forecasts that a 10 percent growth rate was well within reach,” says Dasgupta.

“Indian companies moved on to make Western acquisition and bit by bit, the image of India underwent a positive change.”

He attributes the “newfound” interest in India “to Thomas Friedman’s bestselling book The World is Flat and his popular television series, To Catch a Predator A small section on opinion snippets by celebrities on “what India means to me” brings to the fore the spirit of proud nationalism that forms the moral mosaic of this culturally diverse land. For writer and socialite Shobhaa De, the author of Superstar India, “The idea of Indianness is strangely poignant... it conjures up feelings that are frequently contradictory. Most of us ‘feel’ Indian... even if our outward lives send another image”.

Author-commentator and MP Shashi Tharoor describes India as “colours of paradise”.

“When I think of India, I think of steaming breakfast idlis, pungent coconut chutneys, and lissom women in saris,” he says in the book.

Dasgupta’s first book Indian by Choice is a unique graphic novel about Mandeep - a young Indian born in the US who has a penchant for all things American, including baseball, hot-dogs and blondes. Mandy, as he would rather be called, reluctantly visits India to attend a family wedding despite being horrified at the prospect of spending a month in his native country. Worse, he is forced to delay his departure. And yet, by the end of his stay, he manages to find a connection - and a very uplifting one at that - with the land of his ancestors.