Book Notes: City of Djinns by William Dalrymple

In the early 1990s, the newly-married William Dalrymple, arrived with his wife Olivia Fraser in Delhi, where they would spend the first year of their marriage. The book which emerged from that year spent in that great city is "City of Djinns".

City of Djinns is an extraordinarily vivid read. Dalrymple writes with such a wonderful combination of humour, observation, love and respect for the people, along with the ability to delve deeply into the historical canvass upon which modern Delhi is sketched; that I found the book un-put-down-able.

The eccentricities of the Dalrymple's landlords, the death-defying taxi-driving, the summer,-heat, the longed-for monsoon and explorations of the modern city, and the historical sites all around it, are the entry points for literary excursions into religion, culture, archaeology, anthropology, and rich explorations into the vast arena of Indian history. The great Red Fort, opens up the whole Moghul era, of the Shah's prior to the British Occupation - which also left it's marks all over Lutyen's designed New Delhi. Earlier ramparts and temples lead to explorations of the ghastly Tughluk rule, which in terror, bloodshed, purges and paranoia read like an ancient Stalinism. Old Anglo-Indian eccentrics are tracked down, who tell their bizarre stories of memories of the British rule, and their subsequent marginalisation. Memories of the creation of Pakistan, the partition of India and the exodus of Muslims northwards and Hindus in the opposite direction are explored, and lamented, in some of the most memorable and sad scenes in the book. While Islam had come with severe military force centuries before, Dalrymple idealises the times in Indian history when the great cultures tolerated one another, mingled together and cross-fertilised one another; and conversely loathes the movements which drove them apart. The twin exoduses (exodai?!) of partition, and the suffering surrounding it, the uprooting of ancient peoples. and the subsequent 'ethic'cleansing' (to cite that ghastly Balkan term) are recalled from the memories of those willing to recall those dark days.

The book finds Dalrymple clinging to the inside of a taxi, in which the maniac driver reassures his passenger that all will be well as he is a "lucky" driver - the proof being that not one of his six major crashes have resulted in death! What might count as reassurance in India and Dalrymple's native Scotland, might differ a little it seems. Then it finds him in successive chapters exploring ancient Indian texts with a Muslim translator-scholar, Dr Jaffery; seeing wandering fakirs and holy-men, watching the extraordinary sights and colours of a massive Sufi festival, with the fits ecstasies and whirlings of the Dervishes in the quest for the divine, devotion to saints, and engagement the Djinns (spirits), some of which sound sinister. He discovers ancient and mysterious medical practices which go back millennia, and in all these fields finds practitioners who are sincere and those who are frauds; those who combine herbal cures with long-accumulated life-wisdom; with snake-oil salesmen seeking to cure his wife's terrible skin condition (freckles!). The Dalrymple's spend a long time in the Sikh mourning rites of their landlord, who dies towards the end of the book; respectfully engaging in the week-long, exhausting grieving process which follows a Sikh cremation.

The power of this book, is that even as I sit down to write this little review, scenes, images, people and events from thousands of years of Delhi tumble from my memory. I might picture Shah Jehan,  the batty Haxby sisters, the bizarre Delhi eunuchs, slightly wrongly - but the images which Dalrymple's scintillating prose made on my mind are vivid, and remarkable. I have never been to Delhi, but Dalrymple's exploration of its history, culture, archaeology and people, is almost like smelling it from a distance.

The book is greatly aided by a large glossary of Indian terms at the back; (Charpoy = rope strung bed, Qalander = ecstatic mystic or holy fool, often mentally unstable, Bidi = cheap Indian cigarette, Mahar = severance fee paid to a  Muslim wife in a divorce, Lu = the hot desert wind from Rajasthan in midsummer etc); and by a map of the city at the front; which helps to fix places in the travels described. A bonus would have been a simple time-line to help the less well-informed reader (me!) to get a better handle on some of the eras referred to, and which of all the waves of invaders, occupiers, settlers and dynasties who have ruled Delhi came in which order. That though is a very minor gripe which I could fix myself if I had the inclination and more time. It certainly does not detract from what is a brilliantly informative and entertaining book. 

While the book concludes with the Dalrymples heading back to the Scottish Borders, I was intrigued to read (but not surprised) on his website that their current place of residence is listed as 'A farmhouse just outside Delhi'.