Brajesh's Review: City of Djinns

Another typical Dalrymple, outlining Delhi's history from Mahabharat to Lutyen's period is a must read for every Delhi resident (even if you are there for a month). The diary style writing of his first 12 months in Delhi provides a beautiful canvas to draw the nuances of Delhi's complex history. His wife Olivia's sketches add crunch to the book in a subtle and beautiful manner. The book has now prompted me to buy "Twilight in Delhi" by Ahmed Ali, the book Dalrymple believes to be the best portrayal of the period between Nader Shah's Delhi raids to 1857's siege.

Rating:  3.5/5

Brajesh's Review : The Age of Kali

Not one of the best of Dalrymple. He takes a hard look at the dark underbelly of Indian Sub-continent :- Caste Politics, Reservation, UP/Bihar Chaos, BJP Politics, LTTE, Pakistani Political System, Frontier Fanaticism etc. Since the book is 10 year old, one can use the events of last 10 years to critically evaluate his forecasts / projections. Some prophecies hold, some fail - but overall the book doesn't leave you with a good taste. May be that's the desired reader response.

Rating: 2.5/5

          

Jaipur Literature Festival - Under the Kilt

An absolutely hilarious conversation between 4 Scots. Niall Ferguson, William Dalrymple, Alexander McCall Smith and Andrew O'Hagan.

Itwould be impossible to try to recreate the electric tension, the wit and the repartee of this session on a blog, so I will not even attempt it. Just to sum up, the theme of the discussion seemed to be Scottish Miserabilism.

If the conversation doesn't seem to flow it is mainly because I was laughing so hard, I often missed parts of the conversation :)

The question: Are Scots, really serious about their independence from the UK? was responded to with "In 2006, the National Scottish Party realised that Independence would also mean stop of funds from England, so they have brought their plans almost to a standstill"

There are supposedly deep divisions in Scotland between Edinburgh vs Glasgow. The obvious reason could be their religious orientation Catholic vs Protestant, but it could as well be because of their football teams - Celtics vs Rangers.

A simple question like "How are you?" is normally answered with a gloomy "I'm surviving" or even worse "I'm doomed" Perhaps Scottish Pessimism is the perfect antidote to American Optimism?

If you try to brighten up the mood with the standard American "Nice Day", it would most likely be answered with "Aye, and we'll have to pay for it"

While they are terribly pessimistic, they consider the English far worse. If Ireland has an inferiority complex in their nationalism approach, then the trouble with Scotland is that it has a superiority complex.

As evidence - the East Indian company was full of Scots who saw more opportunities abroad than across the border.

National Self Deprecation seems to be the norm for the Scots. It was indeed remarkable to hear 4 well known authors and hence brand ambassadors for Scotland speaking so about their native land even with the Scottish press in attendance. I Don't think they will be troubled by anyone asking them to apologise or say they were misquoted and revoke their statements any time soon.

Being able to laugh at yourself could be a great antidote to the myriad organisation pop-ups across India who seem to take themselves too seriously

This session was a laugh riot and a wonderful final session for us, before we began our drive back to Delhi.

              

Jaipur Literature Festival - Nine Lives Readings & Performances

23 January 2010

This was a sun down program. While the rest of Jaipur was dry for some elections/rally (or some other political reason), permissions had been got at the Diggi Palace to provide liquid fortification to the attendees and authors.

The evening started with Readings and Performances from William Dalrymple's Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India

The readings were interspersed with vocals by Paban Das Baul and Kanai Das Baul & Debdas Baul. The latter two being the main protagonists of the 9th tale - The Song of the Blind Ministrel

The words, the lyrics, the chanting, the atmosphere, the crowd, the open air seating all just combined to make this a mesmerising and magical evening.

There was more to come. Susheela Raman - a British Tamil Musician came on stage to perform with Sam Mills, Nathoo Lal Solanki and Chugee Khan. The music was absolutely out of this world. This is true World Music. Tamil classical raagas sundg with a stong husky voice, jazzed up with rock and other beats. Its a CD worth buying.

This picture was taken in the afternoon while they were reheasing. In the evening, we lost ourselves in the music and completely forgot to take pictures!



                

Jaipur Literature Festival - Wanderlust

23 January 2010
Wanderlust - A Session with Travel Writers of different kinds.

Brigid Keenan who travelled and relocated across the globe with a young family as the wife of an EU Ambassador who spent 35 years in 9 different countries with Vietnam being the only move by her own choice. She tries to recreate her English home in whichever part of the word she moves to. She read a piece from her book

Isabel Hilton is a journalist who also writes about her travels. Hence her writing is a journalistic viewpoint that is heavily fact based but also slightly humanised with stories. She read a piece from her book about Greenland.

Geoff Dyer who writes travel as fiction, read an extremely humorous piece from 

William Dalrymple who described himself as the stereotypical Single White Male, off with a backpack into the Oriental world, weaves in a lot of history into his books.Even his narrative style is extremely poetic, where he describes a city before naming it.

Travel Writing is a very ancient form of writing, originating perhaps with the Japanese and Buddhist monks who came to India and each of these writers has broadened the genre in a different style.