Divided into two sections, the thirteen essays included in this volume address diverse issues pertaining to modern India. The first section examines a few strands among the many that are woen in the texture of India's plural existence: language, translation, films, migration, nostalgia for a lost home, literary debates that cut across regions, while most essays in the second section go back in time to inquire the questions of religion, politics, the construction of the nation and forming of identities that constitute India's past.