Akash Kapur is the former "Letter from India" columnist for the International Herald Tribune and the online edition of The New York Times. He has also written for The Atlantic, The Economist, Granta, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. He holds a B.A. in social anthropology from Harvard, and a doctorate in Law from Oxford, which he attended as a Rhodes Scholar. He lives outside Pondicherry, in southern India.  His first book, INDIA BECOMING: A Portrait of Life in Modern India, will be published by Riverhead Books on March 12, 2012.

Despite threats against Salman Rushdie, the Jaipur Literature Festival was still an eye-opening and heartening experience for Akash Kapur.