The Age of Kali, William Dalrymple, 1998.
The Age of Kali is a collection of essays on the Indian sub-continent covering the 10 years in the 1990s that travel writer and journalist William Dalrymple spent in India. The essays are sorted by region – north and south India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and an Indian Ocean island.
The title of the book refers to the Indian concept of the four ages (yugas) of the universe – the present Kali Yuga is said to be a time of decay and disorder when evil dominates goodness.
The title is apt. Most of the essays on north India chronicle the bleakness of its political and social landscape. Dalrymple describes how caste, crime, money and muscle power have a stranglehold on rural north Indian society, particularly Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan. Convicted murderers win elections, student unions in universities fight each other using guns and grenades, women are raped, and caste based militias kill each other with impunity. The police are often in collusion with the criminals. The essay on Vrindavan in UP is particularly horrific – the documentary style reportage of the lives of widows condemned to pray to Krishna and beg on the streets and in temples for the rest of their lives is heart rending.
Dalrymple has an eye for detail and an extraordinary ability to compress large amounts of history lightly into a few paragraphs. This makes his writing informative without being heavy going.
The essays dealing with the south are different in character. The ones on Hyderabad and Goa are a lament for a time when these regions were not part of India. Yes, there is the usual whining by survivors from that era about how their old and gracious way of life was rudely ended by insensitive Indians. But as one old Goan lady puts it, Goa was ruled by Portugal for over 450 years – how can it ever be Indian?
The essays on Madurai’s Meenakshi temple and Kochi’s Chotanikkara temple are typical ‘travel’ pieces. What lifts the Madurai piece from the ordinary is Dalrymple’s scholarship in establishing that the temple festival has remained essentially unchanged through 400 years.
The essay on Bangalore uses the violent protests in the city against the Miss World contest and Kentucky Fried Chicken as a metaphor for India’s ambivalence towards multinationals. If Bangalore, India’s hip and happening silicon valley wannabe can nurture such vandalism, wonders the author, how disconnected in fact is India’s westernized elite from the bulk of its rural population.
Dalrymple throws up a startling thought: Perhaps the events in the northern badlands are the future of India, not Bangalore. The booth capturing, gun toting, convicted goonda is now likely to be elected to power not just from Bihar but from several other ‘progressive’ states as well. In that sense, this is then truly the age of Kali.
The essays on contemporary Pakistan are weak. While his analysis of the futility of Pakistan’s democratic system is revealing, his campaign trail pieces on Imran Khan and Benazir Bhutto are little more than celebrity journalism. However, his piece on the forgotten civilization of Gandhara in the north western frontier in the Karakouram ranges is fascinating – great travel writing.
The Sri Lankan essay is fascinating reportage. Many journalists have filed accounts of seemingly heroic journeys through Tamil Tiger country to report on the ethnic strife in the island. But Dalrymple gets to visit a Tiger camp and also talk to the Freedom Birds – the female Tigers. Both, he claims, are a first for any reporter. A fascinating tidbit – the Tigers take fighting and dressing tips from Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger movies!
The Indian Ocean island piece is a middling good read but altogether out of place in this collection. Maybe the publisher bunged it in to save himself another book.
All in all, a wonderful read. Dalrymple is a truly gifted writer. He uses an incident or a quote to illustrate a wider point with a lightness of touch that makes you want to read on and on. It also helps that the book is well laid out in digestible sections.
I liked the book on two counts. One, I suspect Dalrymple is the kind of writer one can read irrespective of what he writes. Two, good travel writers enhance your understanding of places. Even if they are places you think you are familiar with.