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The Beautiful and the Damned: A Portrait of the New India - Paperback | Diverse Reads

The Beautiful and the Damned: A Portrait of the New India

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The Beautiful and the Damned presents an affecting, incisive portrait of the vast, fascinating, and incongruent country that is globalized India.
Siddhartha Deb grew up in a remote town in the northeastern hills of India and made his way to the United States via a fellowship at Columbia. Six years after leaving home, he returned as an undercover reporter for The Guardian, working at a call center in Delhi in 2004, a time when globalization was fast proceeding and Thomas L. Friedman declared the world flat. Deb's experience interviewing the call-center staff led him to undertake this book and travel throughout the subcontinent.

The Beautiful and the Damned examines India's many contradictions through various individual and extraordinary perspectives. With lyrical and commanding prose, Deb introduces the reader to an unforgettable group of Indians, including a Gatsby-like mogul in Delhi whose hobby is producing big-budget gangster films that no one sees; a wiry, dusty farmer named Gopeti whose village is plagued by suicides and was the epicenter of a riot; and a sad-eyed waitress named Esther who has set aside her dual degrees in biochemistry and botany to serve Coca-Cola to arms dealers at an upscale hotel called Shangri La.

Like no other writer, Deb humanizes the post-globalization experience--its advantages, failures, and absurdities. India is a country where you take a nap and someone has stolen your job, where you buy a BMW but still have to idle for cows crossing your path. A personal, narrative work of journalism and cultural analysis in the same vein as Adrian Nicole LeBlanc's Random Family and V. S. Naipaul's India series, The Beautiful and the Damned is an important and incisive work.

A Publishers Weekly Best Nonfiction Book
A Globe and Mail Best Books of the Year

ISBN-13: 9780865478732

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Farrar - Straus and Giroux

Publication Date: 09-18-2012

Pages: 272

Product Dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.61(d)

Siddhartha Deb, who teaches creative writing at the New School, is the author of two novels: The Point of Return, which was a 2003 New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and An Outline of the Republic. His reviews and journalism have appeared in The Boston Globe, The Guardian, Harper's Magazine, The Nation, New Statesman, n+1, and The Times Literary Supplement.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

The Great Gatsby: A Rich Man in India 27

Finding a rich man - the controversial reputation of Arindam Chaudhuri - the Satbari campus - the Power Brands Awards Night ? the ambassador of the world - cigar therapy - a leadership seminar-the enemies - the aspirers - the namesake

Ghosts in the Machine: The Engineer's Burden 72

An earlier incarnation -supplying happiness - low context and high context - Special Economic Zones - the million-dollar house - the Nanopoet - the Gandhi computer - what the Master said-a fascist salute - caste in America - the stolen iPhone

Red Sorghum: Farmers in the Free Market 121

The dying countryside - the navel of India - the chemical village - McKinsey and Vision 2020 - Victory to Telangana - the farmers' market - Prabhakar and the overground Maoists - Dubai and debt - the dealers - 'Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone'

The Factory: The Permanent World of Temporary Workers 165

The encounter squad- India's first Egyptian resort - the steel factory - Malda labour-the barracks - reading Amartya Sen - the security guards - the Tongsman -ghost workers - Maytas Hill County

The Girl from F&B: Women in the Big City 207

The arms dealer-why Esther wanted F&B - the accident - recession in America - the Delhi Police manual-the momo stand-Manipur-the luxury mall-the boyfriend- Munirka again

Acknowledgements 251