During the summer of 2005, a few months before I turned 33, I moved to India, reversing the migration pattern of my father and nearly a hundred of my relatives and of many, many others from a country incorrigibly retrograde, immobilized in amber. In the decade before I returned, the nation had embarked on a makeover, having finally-finally!-cast an envious glance at the so-called tiger economies of Southeast Asia such as Thailand and Malaysia. That summer, the stock market was on a rampage, jumping 100 points a day for weeks on end. India, with its double-digit annual growth rate, was mentioned in the same breath as the economic powerhouse of China. The country's top Bollywood stars, Sushmita Sen and Aishwarya Rai, were making a leap to the big-time neon lights of Hollywood. Fashion designers around the world were looking toward India for inspiration, popularizing long tunics and calf-length peasant skirts. Indian couturiers in their own right were watching models strut their inventions down catwalks in New York and Paris. After decades of being ignored, modern Indian artists could now see their paintings sell in heated auctions at Sotheby's and Christie's in New York and London for six, or even, seven figures. In 2005, three paintings by contemporary Indian artists crossed the one million dollar mark. Before that, the highest amount fetched for a canvas of modern Indian art had been just over $300,000.

And then there was the ongoing technology boom. The U.S. underwent its boom-and-bust hi-tech cycle, but India had no such tentative pas de deux with technology. It was an out and out tango. The rampant practice of software outsourcing, the vast majority of which ends up on Indian shores, was well documented in the press. Americans learned that people named Prakash and Priti, who went by Peter and Peggy at work, were handling their credit card or technical support queries for U.S. companies from call centers in Bangalore. As more U.S. companies began outsourcing an increasing amount of their business activity, some of which had been handled by skilled workers in the U.S., the news stories took on a more alarmist tone-about how Americans were losing their jobs to Prakash and Priti, Rakesh and Sanjay, Shanti and Deepika as corporations tried to cut costs.