Issues of identity are front and center in our time. Old certainties are, for some, antique; and for others, they represent the one thing to hold on to for dear life as essences become contingent or fragmented. I am deeply interested in the matter, and some years ago, for a thesis project, I poked around research on identity. I was ultimately dissuaded by one of my professors who said — and rightly so — that work on identity theory was just too fuzzy. I did write about the subject but in a very specific sense involving cricket and Indian identity (a different story for another time).