Here is an unabashed plug for my upcoming book on the city of Ahmedabad, where I was born and grew up and which, in 2011, completes 600 years of its founding.
This will be one of my three books that will come out in the next few months. The other two are about nanotechnology and the Chicago end of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. Those should make the total number of books written by me to be five, which is still only half way through the mark when I think a professional acquires the heft to introduce himself or herself as a writer. Unless one has written ten books, one is only an aspiring writer. That’s what I am for now.
The following is the blurb from Harper Collins India’s catalogue announcing the Ahmedabad book.
For a city that is India’s seventh largest, Ahmedabad exerts surprisingly light urban gravity. It is a city that gives one the impression that it is either
unaware of or unconcerned about its impact on India’s national life, both throughout history and in modern times. Few metros of Ahmedabad’s size and historical significance are as unselfconscious and untouched by their relevance.
Over the last six centuries, since its founding in 1411, Ahmedabad has frequently found itself at the centre of India’s defining moments. And yet it has kept a surprisingly low profile. Despite its dramatic growth in the last decade and a half, Ahmedabad’s heart remains essentially provincial. The overriding attitude of its people has been that the world will adapt itself to the city rather than the city to the world.
In this intimate story of one of India’s most happening cities, the author captures Ahmedabad as he saw it first hand in the first two decades of his life, and then as a frequent visitor in the last thirty years.
Mayank Chhaya, a native of Ahmedabad, has been a journalist for the past thirty years. He has reported extensively out of India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the United States. He is a widely published commentator on South Asian and US–India affairs. He has written a critically acclaimed biography of the Dalai Lama, Man Monk Mystic, which has been published in twenty languages worldwide.
