Dalrymple plots his own journey (from childhood almost) of sifting through the endless layers of Delhi’s historical stratigraphy and historiography. As he sifts, we discover that in the everyday structures lies dormant splendid stories and great figures. Horoscopes. These are incredibly important to many people in India, especially around marriage decisions. Even the date of the wedding has to be astrologically chosen, and this can result in wedding jams, with everyone trying to get married at more or less the same time. The book starts with a lot of promise but takes a meandering tone halfway through the narration. Delhi's intriguing past is a delicious topic that more than simply nudges your curiosity but WD is yet to bite a fulsome piece into it. Old Mr Puri, her husband, was a magnificent-looking Sikh gentleman with a long white beard and a tin zimmer frame with wheels on the bottom. He always seemed friendly enough—as we passed he would nod politely from his armchair. But when we first took the flat Mrs Puri drew us aside and warned us that her husband had never been, well, quite the same since the riots that followed Mrs Gandhi’s death in 1984.

City of Djinns – HarperCollins City of Djinns – HarperCollins

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.If you think it is bad now,’ said Mr Lal, taking my application. ‘You should see this office on Fridays. That’s the busiest time.’ The Quest to understand delhi convinces D again and again that he has found the key only to be shown each time that the inner doors keep stretching into the distance. A sort of chinese doll palace entrance, with entrances nested inside the other. This sense that the city has created a constant stream of such refugees throughout the years, whether physically or mentally, is central to Dalrymple's understanding of Delhi. The British are an unusual case because, as he points out, their lengthy period of political rule has left remarkably few traces on Indian culture. The Brits that Dalrymple can find who had lived in colonial India show a hilariously skewed kind of imperious equanimity over Indian independence. ‘On balance I think you must never take land away from a people,’ says one old Englishwoman who, as a child, had known Lutyens. So, how does all this come together? Is D a travel writer or a new breed altogether? I wonder how the readers at the time greeted this book that makes not much of an effort towards being a travel chronicle and is quite blatantly an exercise in curiosity.

City of Djinns by William Dalrymple: 9780142001004

Living with a Punjabi family and mixing with Muslim families throws D on an early scent. He follows this contradistinction between the communities and arrives at the answer that partition is what made today’s delhi a city of contradictions. It made me want to seek out the two Eighteenth Century books he used as a guide to learn more. And not only that, who knew Cliff Richard was an Anglo-Indian?There is still continuity here, a few surviving traditions, some lingering beauty, but you have to look quite hard to find it. City of Djinns: a year in Delhi" is probably the finest book on the city of Delhi covering mostly its recent history of 400 years. It is lovingly and passionately researched and is embellished with endearing encounters. The author spends a whole year in Delhi in 1989 and researches for four more years to produce this gem of a book. It was of particular interest to me as I lived in Delhi for five years in the mid- 1970s. This book teaches me how little I knew of the city and its history. The author was just 25 years old in 1989 and shows what a scholar and culturally-sensitive person he was, especially coming from as foreign a culture as that of Scotland. He talks about the many Delhis that exist and has existed in the past. It had been a bad monsoon. Normally in Delhi, September is a month of almost equatorial fertility and the land seems refreshed and newly-washed. But in the year of our arrival, after a parching summer, the rains had lasted for only three weeks. As a result dust was everywhere and the city’s trees and flowers all looked as if they had been lightly sprinkled with talcum powder.

City of Djinns | PDF | Delhi | Mughal Empire - Scribd City of Djinns | PDF | Delhi | Mughal Empire - Scribd

Newly married, William Dalrymple and his wife, the artist Olivia Fraser, move to the Sufi neighborhood of Nizamuddin in New Delhi and set out to explore their adopted city. They arrive in the City of Djinns in September of 1989. Their landlady, the formidable Mrs Puri and her husband are, like so many others in Delhi, refugees of the Partition, Sikhs expelled from their home in Lahore during the upheavals of 1947. The terrors of those times have left Mr Puri flitting in and out of madness, but Mrs Puri has rebuilt the family’s life and fortune with discipline and iron determination. 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. 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. The Puris are the first of many vividly drawn characters who inhabit this city of djinns. The first veils of history that Dalrymple must part to understand the city and hear the whispers of the past are the veils hiding memories of the Great Partition that tore India apart at the very moment of her birth as an independent nation.

He is also always completely immersed in his own experiences. This makes the book especially engaging to readers, as we can almost sense what Dalrymple senses, the smells, sights, and sounds of Delhi. This is the first of William Dalrymple that i am reading. Having being pushed into it via heavy recommendations, must say that WD fails to inspire. What stands about the book for me is how the author's narrative draws up on people who live in and around the city and their understanding of what Delhi means to them : Starting from partition era displaced Punjabis, invisible Anglo Indians, the marginalized Hijra community, less noticed calligraphers and Kabooter Baaz in old Delhi, Persian and Urdu scholars or an Archaeologist studying the excavations and to many more voices with their own unique experiences surrounding what they call their home. People became tired and listless. Fruit decayed: an uneaten mango, firm at breakfast, could be covered with a thin lint of mould by evening. Water shot boiling from the cold taps. There was no relief except to shower with bottles of cold water from Mrs Puri's fridge.... The manners in the ancient courts of the sultans of Delhi. Dalrymple discusses "The Book of the Perfect Gentleman", written by Mirza Nama in about 1650.

City of Djinns — Book Review - Medium City of Djinns — Book Review - Medium

The house stood looking on to a small square of hot, tropical green: a springy lawn fenced in by a windbreak of champa and ashok trees. The square was the scene for a daily routine of almost Vedic inflexibility. Herewith just a few of the things that I found particularly interesting, or which gave me great pleasure. A taster of just a few of the book's delights....

The book follows Dalrymple’s now familiar style of tying together contemporary events and anecdotes with historical tales and fantastical legends. In his quest for the city’s (in)famous djinns (fire-formed spirits), Dalrymple and his wife, the book’s illustrator Olivia Fraser, meet a series of interesting characters. They include a thrifty Sikh landlady and her eccentric husband; a jovial taxi driver; various government officials; eunuchs; whirling dervishes; and living relics of the British Raj. The Many Cities of Delhi in the City of Djinns Its nicest charm is that it conveys, sweetly, the author’s absolute love for the country. The understanding with which he presents his stories becomes contagious and after this relatively short read one feels immersed into the magic and mysteries of India. It was also important for any aspiring young gallant to give good parties. Towards this end the mirza should make a point of smoking scented tobacco blended with hashish; precious gems - emeralds and pearls - should be ostentatiously crushed into his wine.... I cannot recommend this book highly enough....and I cannot recommend it to enough people. I can't think of anyone who wouldn't love it.