Book Notes: The Age of Kali by William Dalrymple

I have yet to read a William Dalrymple which has failed to engage, inspire and educate me; usually about areas in which I am rather ignorant, The Age of Kali, is the latest one to have achieved this, and it consists of a series of essays about different areas of the Indian Subcontinent which he explored in the 1990s - in fact the book is subtitled "Indian Travels and Encounters". Officially Dalrymple's books are divided into his historical works and his travel writing. In practice, while his historical works are very detailed and focused (such as The Return of a King); his travel writing is loaded with historical and cultural analysis. His travel writing is unusual, in that he makes almost no references to himself throughout the book; he's not entirely absent obviously, but his aim is to bring the places, the people, the cultures, customs, sounds, maybe even the smells he encounters into the imagination of the reader. Some travel writers loom large in their narratives - it's all about how they felt, they reacted, they coped or responded to the amazing stimuli of new worlds. Dalrymple on the other hand seems to have mastered the art of getting out of the way, and engaging so vividly with India, that he creates all these reactions within the reader. This might be because Dalrymple, although a Scot, spends at least half his life in India, and so writes neither as a freshly-culture-shocked outsider, nor as an insider for whom everything he experiences is normal; but can actually be something of a window between East and West.

The title, The Age of Kali, is a reference to an ancient Hindu belief of an age in which there would be massive social breakdown and chaos. As so much of what Dalrymple found in India looked like this, and a number of his acquaintances looking at their lives suggested to him that the Age of Kali was upon them.

In the course of his travels, Dalrymple encounters strange cities, temples and rituals, a case of Sati (widow-burning), social breakdown, organised crime, government corruption and wave after wave of extraordinary and fascinating people. Organised by region, as Dalrymple travelled, the book gives the outsider a remarkable insight into the country. A surprise was that he then moved outside India's boundaries, and explored the drug-warfare badlands of the Afghan-Pakistan border; explored with terrifying detail the horrors of the civil-war in Sri-Lanka (with unparallelled access to the Tamil Tigers), in what was perhaps the most vivid and disturbing essay in the book. He then moved onto Pakistan where he spent time on the road with Benazhir Bhutto and her family, followed by a road trip with cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan.

This is not a challenging read, like some of his major historical works; but this is wonderful reading. Insightful, intriguing, expansive and unusual.