The title of this book, Listening to the Loom, derives from a story recounted by the novelist U.R. Ananthamurthy. Walking in Kathmandu with Nagaraj, once, his companion asked him to stop and listen to the sound of a weaver’s loom that only he had heard. Ananthamurthy recalls saying to Nagaraj that so long as he, Nagaraj, retained this ability to hear the sound of a loom, he would never become a ‘Non-Resident Indian’ intellectual. In the present volume, Nagaraj’s ear for the sound and sense of things quintessentially Indian is everywhere apparent. Part I comprises essays on Kannada’s cultural experiences, Part II contains essays on politics and violence. All of them were mostly written between 1993 and 1998, the period when Nagaraj emerged as a mature thinker and produced some of his most important insights. For anyone interested in vernacular cultures, subaltern histories, hinterland political discourses, metropolis-periphery relations, and D.R. Nagaraj’s distinctive insights into all these, the present book is essential.