Portraits are cameos of some of the individual Indians and organizations Julian met during the 1980s and early 1990s in India and elsewhere.

Nirad Chaudhuri was the grand old man of Indian letters, having written his iconoclastic "The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian" soon after Indian Independence. For his pains he was sacked from his job in Delhi and spent the last half of his very long life living in Oxford, while continuing to be a gadfly to Indian pretentiousness. Hariprasad Chaurasia, is perhaps the world's leading exponent of the Bansuru wooden flute, and commuting round the world playing concerts, as well as composing music for films. Both pieces originally aired on NPR's Morning Edition.

The Widows of Madhubani is taken from the CD set called "Gamv: Life in an Indian Village" and describes the plight of women widowed while still children in Bihar. SEWA Ahmedabad is a portrait of the well-known women's organisation Self-Employed Women's Association, founded by Ela Bhatt in Ahmedabad. Both these pieces were originally broadcast on NPR's All Things Considered.