Indian civilization has deep roots, with a rarefied intellectual tendency. They invented chess, our number system and several religions. I should learn more about it. (Michael Wood made a good British documentary series about the history of India.)
I've liked a lot of movies from India, including Mira Nair's Salaam Bombay and Monsoon Wedding. Some of the best are by Satyajit Ray from Bengal, including his three movies about young Apu.
One of the things I like best about India is the food! I first discovered Indian food in my late twenties, when we spent a year in Glasgow, Scotland. (Britain is a good place for "ethnic" food.) Lucky there's an Indian restaurant around corner from our house!
India today is going through many of the same changes that Britain and much of the Western world went through in the 19th century, what with industrialization and urbanization. (Living in Mumbai is said to be as bad for your lungs as smoking!) In fact, the British director Michael Winterbottom recently made Trishna, a reworking of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles set in today's India.
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