Famous Last Questions : A Confused Woman’s Investigations into the Country that Shaped Her

India’s ’90s kids grew up in an offline world and graduated to one that’s hyperconnected and seemingly always on fire. Thisgeneration’s psyche is riddled with qualms about identity politics capitalism technology relationships selfhood and what it means to live authentically—and in <i>Famous Last Questions</i> Sanjana Ramachandran strikes at the heart of their confusion.<br><br>She is sincere and ironic self-flagellating and observant and witheringly funny. In a heroic attempt to understand why she is the way she is she takes a scalpel to her childhood trauma and ends up with the socio-political machinery that set the scene for it thinking out loud: Why is ‘Science Arts or Commerce’ how we decide the course of our lives? Why must we believe in God? Should women get married before the age of thirty or die trying? Why is domesticity so difficult when she isn’t the ‘perfect’ housewife? How has the internet exposed Indian culture? And can virtue actually kill people? <br><br>Motivated by the impulse to heal; to prove her genius; and to win love fame and ‘enlightenment’ Ramachandran unravels the entire idea of the self. In the process she studies dysfunctional family dynamics and her relationship with her quintessentially #IndianParents her upbringing as a Tamil Brahmin girl confronting the ideas of caste religion morality gender and sexuality that define and often betray her generation. <br><br>Above all is her insight into the universal nature of suffering—the dynamics of who gets to suffer publicly and why and alsohow no privilege—whether in terms of caste class gender or sexuality—can ever really escape it. Unafraid to be disliked she talks plainly about millennial narcissism and her own ‘supposed’ transition away from it towards spirituality authenticity and self-acceptance. From describing life in Big Tech to days spent in Vipassana meditation this is a book unafraid of contradictions a heartfelt chronicle of the ‘modern’ Indian woman’s tumultuous journey from needing to achieve everything to searching for wholeness. <br><br><i>Famous Last Questions</i> plays with the boundaries of memoir reportage and research unburdened by the need for absolute answers. The author holds ambiguity closer to heart than any fixed ideal of ‘truth’ conflating the Buddhist notion of no-self with Hindu and Jungian ideas of a deeper abiding self and Godël’s Theorem with the inadequacy of organized world religions. Ramachandran is both the heroine and anti-heroine of this story—which ultimately is the story of us all.