Contributed articles with special reference to India. This year's Sarai Reader brings together a range of critical thinking on urban life and the contemporary, marked by spreading media cultures, new social conflict and globalization. Scholars, media practitioners, critics and activists use a flow of images, memories and hidden realities to create a fascinating array of original interventions in thinking about cities today. In the context of India, where a large part of this reader has been edited, this is significant, given the frugality of writing on city life in this part of the world. Read less