Contributors include Suketu Mehta, on Mumbai, a city "with an identity crisis;" Chitrita Banerji, on "What Bengali Widows Cannot Eat"; Pankaj Mishra, on the making of jihadis in Pakistan and Afghanistan; and Rory Stewart, among the dervishes of Pakistan. Ramachandra Guha and Amit Chaudhuri remember cowboys and Indians and the dignity of American labor; Urvashi Butalia traces a family member through the political geography of India's Partition. Hanif Kureishi describes fundamentalist forces in Pakistani politics. And Nirad Chaudhuri writes on his 100th birthday. The collection includes a poem by Salman Rushdie about the fatwa, and fiction by R.K. Narayan, Amit Chaudhuri, and Nell Freudenberger.