City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi

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The City of Djinns is one of the first books by William Dalrymple which doesn't revolve around the history of India, rather it represents various anecdotes of his time in India and explores the history of India with the help of various characters he meets, like the Puri family, the driver, the customs officer, and British survivors of the Raj, [1] Mrs Puri had achieved all this through a combination of hard work and good old-fashioned thrift. In the heat of summer she rarely put on the air conditioning. In winter she allowed herself the electric fire for only an hour a day. She recycled the newspapers we threw out; and returning from parties late at night we could see her still sitting up, silhouetted against the window, knitting sweaters for export. ‘Sleep is silver,’ she would say in explanation, ‘but money is gold.’ I FINALLY finished this, just so I wouldn't have to carry it to another strange Balkan country. Such high hopes dashed again. I really feel like Dalrymple is some kind of hermaphrodite, who can't decide if he's proudly English or proudly Scottish/English, but he does spend the first part of the book ridiculing Indians who still think they're English, then 10 full days more trying to meet the city's eunuchs, so I guess that excuses his broad apologia for a Scottish governor and empire builder who allegedly embraced native culture by refusing to wear shoes and taking a harem of his own. I guess it helps his case that Dalrymple's wife is related to him. Dalrymple explores the many Mughal monuments in Delhi and delves into the city's life in Mughal times. As I read on, I realized that much of the Mughal history in India that was taught to me in high-schools was mostly a sanitised and untrue version of reality. The brutalities of Mohammed-bin-Tughlak, the massacres in Delhi at the hands of Nadir Shah and Mohammed Ghori and the unjust rule of Aurangzeb have been spelt out in detail in the book. On reflection, I suppose it is just as well that the truth not be told to young minds in India as it would only contribute to greater chasm between Hindus and Muslims. Perhaps, the incestuous advances of Emperor Shah Jahan towards his daughter Jahanara could have been hinted at in our text books!

City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi by William Dalrymple City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi by William Dalrymple

These people bring to life the details of history in a truly unique way. It allows the reader to see how the past actually co-exists with the present. This is something that Dalrymple continues to do with later books, such as The Last Mughal, and with White Mughals. Showman Pictures/UTV Motion Pictures/Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra Pictures But where Delhi was unique was that, scattered all around the city, there were human ruins too. Somehow different areas of Delhi seemed to have preserved intact different centuries, even different millennia … All the different ages of man were represented in the people of the city” Attitudes were changing too. A subtle hardening seemed to have taken place. In the smart drawing-rooms of Delhi, from where the fate of India’s 880 million people was controlled, the middle class seemed to be growing less tolerant; the great Hindu qualities of assimilation and acceptance were no longer highly prized. A mild form of fascism was in fashion: educated people would tell you that it was about time those bloody Muslims were disciplined—that they had been pampered and appeased by the Congress Party for too long, that they were filthy and fanatical, that they bred like rabbits. They should all be put behind bars, hostesses would tell you as they poured you a glass of imported whisky; expulsion was too good for them. And I like the nostalgic or lyrical bits, like this conversation with an author born in Delhi but living in Pakistan: I started to wear women's clothes and to put on makeup. The following year I was taken to a village in the Punjab. I was dosed with opium and a string was tied around my equipment. Then the whole lot was cut off. I knew it would be very painful and dangerous, but I got cut so that no one would taunt me any more. After I was cut all my male blood flowed away and with it went my manhood. Before I was neither one thing nor the other. Now I am a hijra. I am not man or woman. I am from a different sex.’Herewith just a few of the things that I found particularly interesting, or which gave me great pleasure. A taster of just a few of the book's delights.... This was all very admirable, but the hitch, we soon learned, was that she expected her tenants to emulate the disciplines she imposed upon herself. One morning, after only a week in the flat, I turned on the tap to discover that our water had been cut off, so went downstairs to sort out the problem. Mrs Puri had already been up and about for several hours; she had been to the gurdwara, said her prayers and was now busy drinking her morning glass of rice water.

City of Djinns – William Dalrymple (en-GB) City of Djinns – William Dalrymple (en-GB)

Authoritarian regimes tend to leave the most solid souvenirs; art has a strange way of thriving under autocracy. Only the vanity of an Empire- an Empire emancipated from democratic constraints, totally self-confident in its own judgement and still, despite everything, assured of its own superiority-could have produced Lutyens's Delhi" Having your own original opinions was clearly a major flaw in a mirza and, just to be on the safe side, the Mirza Nama offers a few acceptable opinions for the young gentleman to learn by heart and adopt as his own. Among flowers and trees he should admire the narcissus, the violet and the orange..... A gentleman 'should not make too much use of tobacco' but 'should recognise the Fort in Agra as unequalled in the whole world (and)...must think of Isfahan as the best town in Persia.'

City of Djinns is only Dalrymple’s second book. He had not fully mastered his art and the book at times feels disorganized and unbalanced. I longed for a chronology of Indian history and the many Urdu, Persian, Arabic and Hindi terms are sometimes translated and sometimes left for us to Google or guess. Dalrymple’s later outings, including the superb White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India and The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857, explore India’s history with greater depth and scholarly assurance. Those who love fine travel writing and appreciate religious studies should sample From the Holy Mountain: A Journey among the Christians of the Middle East, which has a special poignancy now that world of Dalrymple’s pilgrimage has been destroyed. Still, Dalrymple’s many fans as well as lovers of all things Indian should not miss City of Djinns; it is an atmospheric classic and almost as wondrous as being in Delhi yourself. Three and a half stars. D then embarks on an archeological survey into ancient Delhi of lore - to the Mahabharatha and beyond, right to the Vedic origins of the civilization on the banks of the Yamuna - that is interesting by itself but adds precious little to the illumination of present Delhi. But it still shows how continuing traditions lie at the core of such cities. After all, there are only a handful of truly epic and truly modern cities. He is a thinker who finds nothing but solitude in that exchange of words without ideas, which is dignified by the name of conversation in the society of this land."

City of Djinns by William Dalrymple - Ebook | Scribd City of Djinns by William Dalrymple - Ebook | Scribd

New Delhi was not new at all. Its broad avenues encompassed a groaning necropolis, a graveyard of dynasties. Some said there were seven dead cities of Delhi, and that the current one was the eighth; others counted fifteen or twenty-one. All agreed that the crumbling ruins of these towns were without number. I was a Founder Member cum Chairman of the Religious and Social Institute of India, Patna Branch …’If they ever manage to raise the money — yes. But these days who is going to give funds for a proper ten-year excavation?’ Yes. Handicrafted. Sikh peoples not like this. Sikh peoples working hard, earning money, buying car.’ Most strikingly absent, however, is any REFLECTION about the author's power and privilege in Indian society. This grave omission surfaces in many instances: how this man can walk about all of Delhi with what I would go so far as to call special access. When a house staff member invites him to the wedding and not another long-term colleague from the house staff, WD completely misses the social dynamics (of inviting/ having a white person at a wedding). Instead, he is busy impressing people at the wedding with his Hindi and poorly translating the Devi Lal slogan (read: there is no "Fall" in Haryana...).