A little over a decade ago, Pankaj Mishra travelled through the small towns of India and found they had shed their sleepy, half-apologetic air; brash and ostentatious, kitschy and clamorous, here was an India in transition. A convent-educated young woman from Jhansi aspiring to be a beauty queen; a rich young man in Gujarat speaking casually of murdering Muslims; Naxalites in Bihar trying to foment revolution; small shopkeepers planning a vacation in London - Mishra captured, with irony and humour, a people rushing headlong to their tryst with modernity. Acutely observed and rendered with insight and biting wit, "Butter Chicken in Ludhiana" is a contemporary classic, now revised and featuring a new introduction by the author.