Book Review: CITY OF DJINNS by William Dalrymple

-Geetika Saini

𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐨𝐨𝐤

Publisher: Bloomsbury India
Language: English
Paperback: 360 pages
Price: INR 599/-

𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰

“I asked my soul: what is Delhi?
She replied, the world is the body and Delhi is its heart.”

Every time we’d pass by the impeccable Lodhi Gardens on our way to my Naani’s place, my curiosity would take a leap and I bombarded my father with a deluge of questions about the Delhi Sultanate. I implored him to narrate stories about Akbar and Ibrahim Lodhi, and like a true dastango, he would indulge me with various tales of the bygone era. As a result, this inclination soon developed into a full-fledged obsession with history.

Born and brought up in the heart of India, Delhi is my city and my home, so when I came across this book titled CITY of DJINNS: A year in Delhi by William Dalrymple, my interest was piqued. A foreign author writing about Delhi as he unravels centuries’ worth of history within a span of a year! That tall claim seemed implausible at the moment. But, boy, was I wrong!

Modern yet imbued with tradition, Delhi is an amalgamation of cultures. Home to almost 1.9 crore people belonging to different regions of India and the world, every tradition that ever came to the city has survived in some part of the old alleys, and the sheer bulk of monuments scattered across the city bespeaks their profound history.

Encapsulated by more than 52 gates, sadly, out of which only 13 exist in good condition, Delhi has served as an important political, economic and cultural centre of various Indian civilizations. Since time immemorial, the city has been an epicentre of some major Indian empires like the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Dynasty. A medley of the writer’s personal anecdotes, this book takes a plunge into those multifarious episodes concerning Delhi’s history.

Rewinding history like a cassette, the author chronicles the events that unfolded in Delhi from the mythical past to the present republic. Like a journey back in time, the book starts with the episode of the traumatic 1984 anti-Sikh riots. Next, it recounts the affairs of the Partition, Lutyen’s Delhi and the Raj to the times of the Mughal Age, and the Delhi Sultanate, and finally, zeroes in on the legendary Indraprastha of the Pandavas. The book isn’t just a travelogue, it is a historical account — a mélange of the author’s personal escapades as he experiences the 8 cities of Delhi.

Over centuries, Delhi has amassed a colossal amount of history and as Dalrymple navigates through it, he meets innumerable people and devours large volumes of books in an effort to share his thrills with the readers. As the title suggests, the book is based on the writer’s experiences during his first year in Delhi, reciting his interactions and incidental friendships with the people who inhabited the city at that time, some of whom like the Puri family and the driver Balvinder Singh are continually present throughout the length of the book. The entire narrative is interlaced with a magpie collection of tidbits from the writer’s conversations with these people as he looks for answers in the orderly chaos that is Delhi.

When he tramps through the lanes of Delhi to unravel the mysteries of the forgotten cities, Dalrymple’s insatiable desire to know more, in turn, whets the appetite of the readers to read more. I could not put the book down and the only time I would keep it aside was to delve further into the events and prepare post-it notes because the book is loaded with interesting facts and episodes. The rich descriptions make it easy to imagine all the Delhis in their original splendour, bringing the olden days back to life — they are amusing, humorous, informative, and effective. The small illustrations in the book by the author’s wife and artist, Olivia Fraser, add to the narrative’s charm.

While the brilliance is apparent even at a cursory reading of the book, it is one to be relished lento. As I reached the last page, I was under a spell that I didn’t want to end; reading about the author’s adventures made me feel like taking a tour of the city for my own tryst with history. It inspired me to look around, to experience the remainders of the lavish culture of the past that thrives somewhere in the streets of Old Delhi — a cultural relic in decline.

The book is extraordinary. It not only impresses the readers with its comprehensiveness but also cultivates their interest in a vast majority of lesser-known monuments in the city, the ones that are almost forgotten about and are at constant risk of decay. Highlighting the neglect of these marvels of history, the author talks about their deplorable condition and the precariousness of losing magnificent cultures to disdain and ignorance.

Read the book, it’s totally worth it!