Former US President Barack Obama writes about his fascination with India in his latest book ‘A Promised Land’ saying he always held a special place for India, maybe it was its (India’s) sheer size, with one-sixth of the world’s population, an estimated two thousand distinct ethnic groups, and more than seven hundred languages spoken. 

“Maybe it was because I’d spent a part of my childhood in Indonesia listening to the epic Hindu tales of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, or because of my interest in Eastern religions, or because of a group of Pakistani and Indian college friends who’d taught me to cook Dahl & Keema and turned me on to Bollywood movies,” Obama writes.

“A Promised Land” is the first of two planned volumes. The first part hit bookstores globally on Tuesday. In the book Obama gives an account of his journey from the 2008 election campaign to the end of his first term with the daring Abbottabad (Pakistan) raid that killed Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.