City of Djinns by William Dalrymple – A Book Review

          William Dalrymple, in one of his interviews says, “If I had five more lives, I would have lived all of them in India.”

I have travelled to Delhi many a times. If you ask a non-Delhiite about the city, though they would awe at the roads and structures, complain about the filth and crowd in some parts of the city, one common thing that they would say is ‘it’s a city of snobs’ and so would I.

Delhi – a city like any other city in the world; what’s the fascination attached to it? History, I would say and so says WD; a beguiling city built from a scratch and then destroyed, reduced to a scratch. And built again only to be destroyed again, and again, and again; like a potter’s creation at the wheel, marvelled at for some time and then thrown again to the hearth by the vagarious potter who doesn’t want anyone else to see its beauty.

Conquered by the mightiest of conquerors the world has ever seen, Delhi, apart from being their capital of power, was like a beautiful princess that every king or emperor vied for. It held a certain enigmatic love for them; a love, a masculine, salacious consummation that these monarchs couldn’t possibly find in their harems.

            WD’s research of the city is absolute. His travelogue extends from the epidermal surface of the current unconcerned multitude of the Delhi people, and excavates to scour layer upon layer of treachery, annihilation, love and power; an era long buried in the city’s abyss. WD talks of the mammoth structures the city hosts, their comparison to facades in the west, their historical bearing and the neglected state that they are in today. The ‘Red Fort’ receives a special mention and righty so; the throne from where was ruled most of India, all of Pakistan and great chunks of Afghanistan during the time of the celebrated Moghul Emperor Shah Jehan. WD writes, it was the apex of Moghul power, the golden age of unparalleled prosperity.

            The story of Delhi is incomplete without the mention of three important entities; the Moghuls, the Britishers and the bloody partition. Powerful and obstinate rulers like Timur the lame, Muhammed –bin-Tughlaq, Nadir Shah, Shah Alam, Shah Jehan and Aurangzeb, WD says, had their own doctrines, their own laws to abide by, each so different from the other. Some respected the saints, the others abhorred and beheaded them. The city’s story is replete with acts of deceit, treachery, barbarity and incest too. How many people would believe that the great emperor Shah Jehan, who built the Taj Mahal in memory of his wife Mumtaz was salaciously close to his eldest daughter Jahanara Begum. Needless to say, each king had his own harem, decorated and filigreed with the choicest of women.

            “As you sow, so shall you reap”, probably was quoted of Shah Jehan, an emperor who, though liberal than the others, conquered his place to the throne by killing his brothers and their children and capturing his father. Not surprisingly the barbarous Aurangzeb, one of his neglected sons imprisoned him, killed his own kin  and presented to him on the dining table, the lifeless head of his favourite son and successor to the throne Dara Shukoh.

WD meets historians, researchers, knowledgeable people, old members or their descendants from that time in history. With the changes in the throne, the language of Delhi has come a long way though the transformation isn’t a pleasant one. From Persian to Urdu, an immaculate language delivering and demanding respect, the language of the poets, the city now has to do with Hindi. Delhi, once was the land of poets like Mir, Jalal-ud-din Rumi, Ghalib and the likes, and the greatest gift to a king would be the latest verses from the great Mir than any jewel or tapestry.

While meandering around the streets of Delhi, WD meets some interesting multitude like the eunuchs, the masters of the pigeon fights, the leftover Britishers and their families, now called Anglo Indians, the survivors of partition like his landlady and the driver. The eunuchs, though in the present time are rebuked, they had a stronghold in the days of the emperor; they were a part of the courts, caretakers of the harems. At the Nizam-ud-din mosque, a place thronged by both the rich and the poor, the saints tell WD about the Djinns, their existence since God created man, how they can be captured and used.

Delhi, as WD rightly points out, post the India-Pakistan partition is itself divided into two conspicuous parts; old Delhi sporting the remnants of the Moghul era in bits and pieces and New Delhi, a facade of Lutyens’s brilliant architecture and now a house to the Punjabis. India, always has been an easy country to be besieged because of its religious differences. The bloodbath of partition is a horrific tale where entire villages were annihilated, people burnt alive, women raped – a crowd has no face, or rather has the face of a terror. As Dr. Jaffery, a historian tells WD, “In this city, culture and civilization have always been very thin dresses. It doesn’t take much for that dress to be torn off and for what lies beneath to be revealed.”

            WD’s research is excellent; he presents facets of the city which a tourist would normally miss. If you ever happen to visit the city, sitting on the ramparts of a fort or marvelling the intricate designs of a palace, or being blessed by the saints in one of the mosques, the djinns will most definitely bring to life snippets from this book. And as you relive the glorious incidents of that era, you would shudder at the thought of living under the rule of a monarch.

The worst part about reading history is that it’s almost always a biased, colourful story written by sycophants; WD’s travelogue isn’t that, it is unbiased, written without any obligation or pressure.

My rating: * * * * * * * * * * - 7/10

Image copyright:

Book Cover - http://www.amazon.in/City-Djinns-Delhi-William-Dalrymple/dp/0143031066
WD image - http://gulfnews.com/culture/people/william-dalrymple-if-i-had-five-more-lives-i-d-live-them-all-in-india-1.1152542

William Dalyrympe