The book under review is the outcome of deliberations by a group of academics, self-named the Backwaters Collective, who met at the captivating landscapes of Maharashtra, Kerala and Sri Lanka for an exercise in thinking differently about the “unthinkable India.” How to transcend the hackneyed binaries like the traditional versus modern, religious versus secular, materialistic versus spiritual, and precolonial versus colonial, while still representing the Indic civilisation, is what the Backwaters Collective explores.