City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi

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Things the book does well deserve initial mention. Obviously, a lot of research went into the book, both academic and experiential, and both of them are laudable and it's always a tougher task for someone from the outside (culturally, even if not geographically) when compared to those who grow hearing about most of the things the text here uncovers. Secondly, it is, after all, well written. WD does quite a good job with his explanations and dramatic moments and an even better, albeit perhaps just a bit parodic, job of representing dialogue and highlighting the unique way English has been appropriated here and frequently misused for all global purposes while yet managing to do the job locally. Finally, he managed to, at that point in time, bear a whole year here all that time ago, when it was most possibly much more difficult than it'd be now. City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi is a fascinating book by British author William Dalrymple. Released in 1993, it was the result of a year-long stay in New Delhi, and explores the centuries of history present in the city. Part memoir and part travelogue, it paints an engaging and informative portrait of this age-old city. With little possibility of much fulfilment in this world, they look to the next; they are forever visiting temples and mosques...and going on pilgrimages to Hindu and Muslim shrines." It's a sad occasion. Husband and wife have never met one another and do not do so until towards the end of the wedding ceremony. She in in her early forties. Her father was unable to afford the costs of a wedding when she was younger. The groom is quite a bit younger than the bride. Both look very unhappy. City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi (1993) is a travelogue by William Dalrymple about the historical capital of India, Delhi. It is his second book, and culminated as a result of his six-year stay in New Delhi.

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

This is the second time I've read this book. The first was when I was 15, and even then, I found it to be an interesting book. 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 My God, I just saw Dalrymple interviewed on a dodgy History channel documentary! The documentary is hosted by a woman whose Muslim grandparents never trusted Ghandi, and wouldn't you know Dalrymple agrees. What's so weird, aside from his alleged expertise, is that he shows up on camera seated in a lotus position, with bare feet, answering in a candence so Indian I had to be certain it was him doing the talking. What a show. The book followed his established style of historical digressions, tied in with contemporary events and a multitude of anecdotes.as well as whirling dervishes and eunuch dancers (‘a strange mix of piety and bawdiness’). Dalrymple describes ancient ruins [1] and the experience of living in the modern city: he goes in search of the history behind the epic stories of the Mahabharata. Still more seriously, he finds evidence of the city’s violent past and present day—the 1857 mutiny against British rule; the Partition massacres in 1947; and the riots after the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984. Walking through the streets of this old city, Dalrymple visits ruins hidden in narrow lanes and wades through musty old libraries to piece together its past. Throughout all this, he ties together the past and the present, especially when talking to people with connections to these chapters of Delhi’s past. From the author of the Samuel Johnson Prize-shortlisted ‘The Return of a King’, this is William Dalrymple’s captivating memoir of a year spent in Delhi, a city watched over and protected by the mischievous invisible djinns. Lodging with the beady-eyed Mrs Puri and encountering an extraordinary array of characters – from elusive eunuchs to the last remnants of the Raj – William Dalrymple comes to know the bewildering city intimately. The major exception to Britain's complete disappearance from Indian society is of course the English language. The English spoken in India is its own animal, with all kinds of strange and unusual pleasures awaiting those who are unfamiliar with it. Its status as a lingua franca means that the fluency of some users is not high, and many of the ensuing idiosyncrasies, along with influences from Indian languages, have made their way into the standard idiom. The result is a very dynamic printed language subject to a lot of rapid tonal shifts which make it especially prone to bathos and other register-clashing effects. Dalrymple offers up this obituary from the Hindustani Times as a minor classic of the genre:

City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi: William Dalrymple

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.’

Poetic licence,’ said the professor. ‘The archaeological evidence shows that the Painted Grey Ware culture was really fairly primitive — basically it was a rural, pastoral economy. At Hastinapura they had iron and copper implements, a few tools made of bone. Some glass ornaments, good wheel-turned pottery …’

City of Djinns - Wikipedia

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" The book is well researched, beautifully narrated and gripping. At least Delhi wallahs can proudly claim their city is the oldest in this part of the world nearly three thousand years old-if not more. An interview with the Crown Princess - the last in line of the Mughals who founded Delhi. (See comment 14 for more info.) Dalrymple’s second book after the acclaimed In Xanadu (1989), it went on to win the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award (1994) and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award (1994). But where does it stand today? It is an utter delight from beginning to end. A smorgasbord of historical people and places, myths and facts, festivals and parties, pilgrimages and ancient texts. It is also full of touching examples of everyday life - as Dalrymple explores with a kindly eye, the nooks and crannies of Delhi and its people.They keep pigeons with different abilities - high fliers, fast fliers, fighters...which they train to do all sorts of things. Pigeon keeping was the "civilized old pastime of the Mughal court" Its delights and dangers were illustrated by Mughal miniaturists, and there were laws governing its practice. But perhaps the strangest novelty of coming to live in India—stranger even than Mrs Puri—was getting used to life with a sudden glut of domestic help. Before coming out to Delhi we had lived impecuniously in a tiny student dive in Oxford. Now we had to make the transition to a life where we still had only two rooms, but suddenly found ourselves with more than twice that number of servants. It wasn’t that we particularly wanted or needed servants; but, as Mrs Puri soon made quite clear, employing staff was a painful necessity on which the prestige of her household depended. 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: A Year in Delhi City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi

Since the riots, Mr Puri had also become intermittently senile. One day he could be perfectly lucid; the next he might suffer from the strangest hallucinations. On these occasions conversations with him took on a somewhat surreal quality: There are three quarters of a million eunuchs or 'hijra' in India. In the past, they used to be castrated men, but today, in India, these people are usually transexuals (I think in this instance men who want to be women), or asexuals (people born without any sexual distinction.) The author adds another dimension to these stories and makes them much more interesting by introducing some modern day aspect, say an existing but long forgotten ruin or a living person who is directly related. We get to meet Dr Jaffrey who serves as an expert on Purani Dilli, the Haxby sisters who tell us about the unfortunate Anglo Indians, and a visit to an Office of the Railways Board reveals a tykhana built for William Fraser.a b Dalrymple, William (24 July 2014). "William Dalrymple on Delhi". The Telegraph . Retrieved 6 July 2020. An extract from William Dalrymple's City of Djinns (1993) The Mirza Nama was an extraordinary document. It revealed an unrepentantly superficial world where life revolved around the minutiae of outward appearances and public display. What was vital in a young 'mirza' (or gentleman) were the clothes and manners which covered him; the wholeness or corruption of the man within was of no interest or relevance. The most important thing - of course - was being seen with the right people.....'He (the mirza) must not speak to every unworthy person, and should regard men of his own class as the only (fit) companions (for him.)' He should not 'joke with every good-for-nothing fellow'. The young gallant should never ever be seen walking on foot, and should at all times carry funds enough 'for the expenses of a palanquin' which he should regard as 'the best of all conveyances'.... Other changes in the city were less promising. The roads were becoming clogged; pollution was terrible. Every day the sluggish waters of the Jumna were spiced with some 350 million gallons of raw sewage. I was hooked to the works of William Dalrymple from the moment I started reading City Of Djinns. It was in 2004 while browsing through a bookshop that I came across three of the 2004 penguin published Indian editions from the author – ‘City Of Djinns’, ‘The Age of Kali’ and ‘In Xanadu’ and I bought them all. The authors name was slightly familiar from a newspaper article, which I have read a year before about his documentary titled ‘Indian Journeys’ and the news about his then published ‘White Mughals’. This is a painstakingly researched book written by William darlymple with a great deal of love and imparting a lot of dignity to the people of Delhi, both, the ones who left and refugees who have tried to make a home here. The old Delhiwallahs who are still feeling exiled and heartbroken, In far-away places, and the resettlers who are trying to make themselves worthy of this city by building expensive but ugly new Havelis of their own, will find their voice and their pain reflected in this book. It’s a must read for anyone who left a place they knew to make a life somewhere else. Read more