William Dalrymple on India: 'Nine Lives' and a changing nation
The ultimate Indophile, author William Dalrymple, comes off his research desk and is now perched on the kind of charpoy rope bed found in Indian villages, idly scratching the belly of his dog Aishwarya as he shares his experiences writing and then touring with his popular new book, "Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India". Introduced here on CNNGo.
As the title indicates, Dalrymple’s latest book profiles nine people from different religious persuasions, different walks of life and different regions in India. But as I found out, there were far, far more stories that his research revealed, which never saw the light of day.
"There were many that didn't make the cut," he says, a little pensively.
For Dalrymple, the story that stands out was that of a former Hizbul Mujahideen who fled Kashmir after seeing his aunt raped by security forces, wound up in an al Qaeda camp in Kandahar, and returned to lead the Kashmiri resistance.
Most of the stories in "Nine Lives" have similar echoes of renunciation, sacrifice and refuge sought in religion, set against the backdrop of an India in transition.
Dalrymple, a Scot, has reported from and written about India for 25-odd years, and is arguably one of the country's best commentators, having scoured the length and breadth of the country for his books and reportage.
In "Nine Lives", he profiles a vast range of people: a Jain nun, a Buddhist monk, a South Indian temple dancer, a woman born into a community of prostitutes. In India’s diverse, multi-layered cultural system, there are countless human interest stories that get lost in the fray, that disappear under the almost blanket coverage of Bollywood and cricket.
The nine lives Dalrymple chose came after two to three hundred interviews the writer conducted over a number of years, which he then shortlisted on the basis of their extraordinary life stories.
“The book makes no claims of being comprehensive, or encyclopedic or even representative; they are nine randomly chosen people,” he says. “The ones I’m most fond of I chose for the power of their stories. A Jain nun who watches her best friend ritually starve herself to death and then embarks on it herself. A beautiful devadasi woman who has just been put into sex work and then ends up putting her two daughters into it. These are extraordinary human stories. A Baul musician, a blind man who can’t beg enough money for his sister’s dowry, she ends up hanging herself, like something out of Thomas Hardy's "Jude the Obscure", ‘because we were too many’.”
Interestingly, sales so far indicate that Nine Lives has struck a chord with Indian readers, rather than just foreigners. When it released in October this set of non-fiction jumped straight to the top of the Indian best sellers list. Could this be an indication of a greater degree of introspection amongst Indians?
"Perhaps," muses Dalrymple. Or maybe Indians are thirsty for stories about themselves that don’t involve swashbuckling storylines like a typical Bollywood drama. One of the great benefits of his book is that it opens a window on to unknown worlds. A Keralan might know of the region’s temple dancers, but someone from the north undoubtedly wouldn’t, while a Mumbai-ite would have scarcely heard of a community of skull-worshiping Tantrics on the edge of West Bengal.
“Often urban India doesn’t know what’s going on outside its glass bubble and Bollywood stars and familiar politicians,” says Dalrymple. And while there’s a desire to know, the threat of censorship is weighing down, particularly in Mumbai.
“I think Bombay, which traditionally has been the sophisticated and cultural heart of India, has gone in reverse, thanks to people like Bal Thackeray and the Shiv Sena. I’m taking my 'Nine Lives' tour around, involving some of the people profiled in the book, and we’ve just discovered we can’t put Pakistani artists on stage in Bombay. There is every chance of them being heckled, or cut down, even shot at, by the Shiv Sena.
"Bombay is a city that is under threat by cultural fascists, although is putting up a good resistance, but we don’t have the same problem in Delhi."
Dalrymple has a deep love for Delhi, and five years ago settled in a farmhouse on the outskirts of the capital, a semi-rural idyll that is an ideal setting for any writer. Bells and chanting can be heard in the distance from a nearby temple, while closer, a pet cockatoo squawks insistently.
“The changes I’ve seen in the 25 years I've been here have been extraordinary,” he says. “'The City of Djinns' was published in 1992 and was about a Delhi which no longer exists. Just, what, 17 years ago it was a Delhi where there were one new car, the Maruti, while everybody else was driving about in 1950s Ambassadors. It was a city where there were really only Punjabi refugees, now it’s an all-India city.”
Dalrymple describes "Nine Lives" as merely a collection of nine, albeit non-fiction, short stories, however accedes that there is a greater context to the book, set as it is against a background of an India in transition. And as the country continues its march towards greater urbanisation and modernity, it’s more important for stories like these to be preserved.
Find William Dalrymple at next month's Jaipur Literature Festival in Rajasthan, where he is creative director along with Namita Gokhale.
