River Valley to Silicon Valley (Story of Three Generations of an Indian Family)

Abhay K. was born in Nalanda district in Eastern India in 1980. He was educated at Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University. He joined the Indian Foreign Service in 2003. He is a writer-diplomat currently serving India in Moscow, Russia. He is the author of "Enlightenment- Poems for heart, mind and soul"- a collection of a hundred poems that have been read and appreciated the world over. His poems "Smitten by Green" & "I Believe" have been published by the Forward Press, UK in two separate anthologies titled "Natural Spirit" edited by Michelle Afford(2006) and " A Moment of Déjà vu " edited by Annabel Cook(2007).

This is a sincere, simple and readable account of Abhay Kumar's journey from the banks of the river Paimar to the portals of the Foreign Service Institute in New Delhi. This is a story many young Indians could relate to, those with rural and educationally disadvantaged backgrounds successfully transforming their personal lives and prospects by availing of the opportunities that India's democratic system and its recent economic provide. In its own way, the book is positive commentary on the process of change Indian society, on the scope for self-advancement even to the point of becoming a of the country's elite through education and competition that now exists.

The human the narrative will also touch many in the readers. The childhood memories told by a grandmother, the venturing the family nest in rural India to an environment in search for better in life, and the presence of the in the emotional landscape of an Indian lour not a complicated book; it is and India is an enigma wrapped in several layers.

It opens as much as one tries to get into its depth. India is known to the world since the time of the Greek Historian Herodotus who believed that gold-digging ants existed in India. India since then has always been a blend of fact and fantasy for the outside world. Megesthenes, the Greek envoy to the court of the great Indian emperor Chandragupta Maurya (320-297 BC) wrote a firsthand account of India in which he 7ainted an idyllic picture of life in India. In the medieval times Arab travelers Al Beruni and Ebn Batuta wrote the greatest accounts of India.

Despite these accounts by great travelers and scholars the myth and legend of India continued in absence of concrete information about this vast and diverse land. The mysterious veil that covered India was gibed with the opening of the sea route to India beat Europe and the arrival of the traders. These traders encountered a civilization with set a create diversity that they found it difficult miraculous in the last few decades. The percentage share of agriculture in the total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country has slid below twenty percent while the percentage share of services amounts to more than fifty percent of its GDP.

**Contents and Sample Pages**