Of matters Modern analyses the experience of modernity in South Asia. Arguing that South Asia's experience of modernity has to be understood in a global context, the book explores a wide range of topics: the emergence of 'Assam Fever' in colonial discourse; an experiment with fusion music in early colonial India; The emergence of detective fiction in colonial Punjab; the search for authenticity among nationalist and post-colonial thinkers; the critique of the Bhadralok by a Bhadralok writer; the experience of modernity in Kolkata during early twentieth century; the emergence of a cosmopolitan 'underworld' in Kolkata during the nineteenth century; the Italian connections of a Bengali poet, Michael Madhusudan Dutta; the ambivalence of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan; the construction of Gandhari in Amar Chitra Katha, a comic strip series for children.

Debraj Bhattacharya is an independent researcher based in Kolkata and has published on the 'underworld' of Calcutta during the early Twentieth Century.