The Indian portrait of the 2000's

India was erupt­ing in dreams.

It was the dream to own a microwave or refrig­er­a­tor or motor­cy­cle. The dream of a roof of one’s own. The dream to break caste. The dream to bring a cell­phone to every Indian with some­one to call. The dream to buy out busi­nesses in the king­dom that once col­o­nized you. The dream to marry for love, all the com­pli­cated fam­ily con­sid­er­a­tions be damned. The dream to become rich. The dream to over­throw the rich in revolution.

These dreams were by turns far­sighted and far­fetched, prac­ti­cal and imprac­ti­cal, gen­er­ous and self­ish, prin­ci­pled and cyn­i­cal, focused and vague, pas­sion­ate and drift­ing. They were tem­pered by coun­ter­vail­ing dreams and, as ever in India, by the dogged pull of the past. Some were chang­ing India pal­pa­bly; oth­ers had no chance from the begin­ning. But that was never the point. It was the very exis­tence of such brazen, unapolo­getic dreams, and their dif­fuse flow­er­ing from one end of India to the other, that so deci­sively sep­a­rated the present from the past – and sep­a­rated the India of the license raj systems from the India to which we now belong.

The Indian rev­o­lu­tion was within. It was a rev­o­lu­tion in pri­vate life, in the tenor of emo­tions and the nature of human rela­tion­ships. The very fab­ric of Indi­an­ness – the mean­ing of being a hus­band or wife, a fac­tory owner or fac­tory worker, a mother-in-law or daughter-in-law, a stu­dent or teacher – was slowly, gen­tly unrav­el­ing by the force of these dreams, and allow­ing itself to be woven in new ways.