The Butterfly Generation
Mehrotra paints a vivid and compelling portrait of young urban Indians today. His memories and experiences of a socialist India in the past are contrasted with the sights and sounds of a contemporary Americanised India. The book tells the story of one man and one country laid bare, a no hold’s barred journey through the call centres, technological business parks and the nightclubs of a nation on the meteoric rise. How do young Indians in the age group of 25 to 35 reconcile these disparate worlds? How does he reconcile them?
Part memoir, part-travelogue, The Butterfly Generation is the first book about India to be written from an internal perspective, and also the first to focus on the youth of India; a portrait of a generation that is the first of its kind in India. Free to flirt with the west and take on their dreams, The Butterfly Generation flits back and forth from Hindi to English, Bollywood to Hollywood without batting an eyelid. As Mehrotra says, they are old enough to remember the steam train but young enough to appreciate broadband.
