Capital: The Eruption of Delhi

Acknowledgements

The conversations I had with the individuals who appear in this book were one of the great privileges of my life. Since I have concealed their identities in order to protect their privacy, my gratitude, too, must remain anonymous; but I thank each one of them devoutly, nonetheless, for the candour and enthusiasm with which they gave of their experiences.

I thank also my parents, not so much for sharing their stories with me, as for the courage with which they lived them in the first place.

Capital owes much to discussions with inspiring friends and acquaintances, of whom the following is surely an incomplete list: Moushmi Basu, Gautam Bhan, Gautam Bhatia, Shalini Bhutani, Arani Bose, Eisha Chopra, Taru Dalmia, William Dalrymple, Puru Das, Veena Das, Sapna Desai, Ashish Dhawan, Raseel Gujral, Satish Gujral, Pankaj Vir Gupta, Deepti Kapoor, Raghu Karnad, Bharti Kher, Martand Khosla, Romi Khosla, Nadine Kreisberger, Siddhartha Lokanandi, Diya Mehra, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Anurag Mishra, Rajat Mitra, Geetika Narang, Reena Nath, Nandan Nilekani, Ritesh Pandey, Basharat Peer, Gary Reid, Pradip Saha, Vivek Sahni, Aditi Saraf, Chiki Sarkar, Jonathan Shainin, Abhishek Sharan, Sher Singh, Ayesha Sood, Jyoti Thottam, Madhu Trehan and Ashutosh Varshney.

During those interviews that took place in Hindi, Mihir Pandya was much more than an able interpreter. Deepak Mehta and Ashis Nandy were wise and inspiring mentors. I gained enormously from the visionary suggestions and generous contributions of Ashish Mahajan, Kanta Murali, Ayesha Punvani and Anand Vivek Taneja, to whom I am especially grateful.

The companionship, intellectual and otherwise, of Bhrigupati Singh and Prerna Singh was foundational, as always.

Without my amazing daughter, Amália, I would not have been capable of writing Capital at all. Thank you, thank you, my love.