The Making of Arundhati Roy

After college, I took a long trip to India. The ostensible reason was to assist with a research project on the country’s vast informal labor sector. But my personal reasons were both urgent and clichéd. Spending time in my parents’ native country would cure me of an encroaching sense of existential displacement. Upon returning home, I would feel connected, confident, perhaps even slightly high on the fumes of India’s glittering BRICS-utopia-to-come. This was the hope, at least.