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The Age of Kali: Indian Travels and Encounters

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William Dalrymple is one of the best travel writers about. His book "THE AGE OF KALI" is a collection of essays written during his many travels over the years through India. Don't be deceived by the title, although Dalrymple talks about the ancient Goddess Kali, this book is not about her; it is in fact about the transition that India is going through, "the age of Kali" a time when change takes place, often not for the best. In this book he shows a side of India that perhaps many would like to avoid discussing. He talks about India's dark side, the violence, religious intolerance, the abject poverty of many people, a stronger than ever caste system along with the pain of a country struggling to find its feet in the 20th century. This is not a depressing book, far from it, Dalrymple shows the reader, that despite all the problems India has to contend with, she is a country of great beauty, great compassion and many wonders, admid all the tragedy, corruption, and heartbreak. This is not a book for the squeamish and if you want a read that romanticizes India, then this isn't for you. However, if you are looking for a book that you won't be able to put down, then this is certainly something you will want to read again and again.

It is amusing that some of the most interesting and veridical commentantary on the cultural and political anarchy that is India should come from a non-Indian raconteur. Beautifully illustrated by Olivia Fraser, The Age of Kali offers a compassionate view of a nation struggling against forces both modern and ancient. William Dalrymple has written a book that is required reading for anyone interested in India's emerging role in world affairs.

Hindu cosmology divides time into four great epochs, or yugs, which represent the movement from perfection toward moral and social disintegration. Many Indians today believe that they live in the Kali Yug, or Age of Kali, a period of rapidly advancing darkness marked by chaos, corruption, and decay. Not until the world is cleansed by fire will the cycle repeat itself, restoring balance. "In the Age of Kali," writes Dalrymple, "the great gods Vishnu and Shiva are asleep and do not hear the prayers of their devotees. In such an age, normal conventions fall apart: anything is possible." Despite being at the vanguard of the computer software industry and having recently joined the ranks of world superpowers with the successful test of an atomic bomb--an ominous development when one considers the state of relations with neighboring Pakistan--India remains a country firmly entrenched in the past. In much the same way that the Luddites rebelled against the first wave of industrialization, so too have many Indians, especially the more conservative followers of the Hindu religion, resorted to violence to express their dissatisfaction with encroaching Western influence. Xenophobia and intense nationalism maintain in defiance of the fast food restaurants, beauty pageants, and satellite TV stations that threaten traditional Indian values.

Dalrymple's essays succeed in presenting the many disparate facets of Indian society as a whole, from the glitterati of Bombay's movie scene (otherwise known as "Bollywood") to the dispossessed women of Vrindavan who roam the streets begging alms, to the conflicts between Hindu and Muslim factions that continue to escalate in number and intensity (including the recent horrendous Gujarat massacres), to the blood feuds and political turf wars waged in Bihari, which, like Lahore and parts of Uttar Pradesh, has succumbed to the rule of drug lords and corrupt government officials, or surprisingly even to the risilient malaises such as caste system and sati -- the research is right on target.

This is an amusing book, laden with factual insights about India, and is a breeze to identify with -- perhaps it takes an "outsider" to look at a kaleidoscopic country under such a prying lens. Highly, highly recommended!

Dalrymple's work is a real surprise. To be honest, I hadn't even heard of the author until I read (on this site) a rather poisonous reader's review of Jason Elliot's excellent book about Afghanistan (An Unexpected Light) that included a statement like, "He's no Dalrymple..."

Dalrymple's travels in India are masterfully recorded. He manages to meet and talk with major figures in India's fast-changing society, including a variety of notorious and violent characters. Dalrymple investigates the slow erosion of the caste system, the increased awareness of women's rights (and the fissure that the issue has opened between urban and rural populations), the corruption and the squalor, and India's newly emerged wealth and power in a way that is both direct and sympathetic.

In the earlier sections of the book (which is really a loose collection of long journalistic essays) Dalrymple investigates the subcontinent's increasingly corrupt political system and the resulting rise of the ultra-nationalist BJP, whose members often use language eerily similar to that of the Nazis in the 1930s, inciting violence and murder while attacking the Muslim minority. Given that India now has a domestic nuclear weapons program the emergence of the BJP is downright scary, and important to understand in terms of its origins.

India has an increasingly powerful role to play in world affairs, and a growing middle class of technology-literate citizens. But if Dalrymple is right, it seems also to be collapsing under the weight of its own history. This book provides important insight into a culture that is otherwise too easy to ignore.

Dalrymple covers a lot ground including Bahir, Rajasthan, Bombay, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Goa, Sri Lanka, Reunion Island, & even Pakistan: Islamabad, Peshawar. Everywhere he goes Dalrymple(with the assistance of expertly chosen guides) gives you a sense of the historical scope of each city or region from its moment of grandeur to its moment of decline, with an equal amount of scrutiny being given to recent happenings and current political trends. In India facts must be dug for amid the many fictions in circulation and Dalrymple never one to take anyones word for anything does some admirable journalistic investigation of a murder at an elite boarding school, gathers together all the conflicting eyewitness accounts a modern day sati, and he even spends some time getting cozy with the notorious Tamil Tigers whom he finds to be amazingly young(their female contingent or 'Freedom Birds' remind him of Bond girls). And he interviews a lot of memorable figures including the militant Hindu revivalist Rajmata Vijayaraje Scindia and Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto(both scathing portraits) as well as many who recollect and recreate for him in conversations and tours of dusty palaces tales of unimaginable opulence and decadence of India's not too distant past. The old cities are vanishing or have vanished, existing as heaps of stone tucked between modern office buildings. The cities are modernised, there is even an Indian equivalent to silicon valley but the rural areas remain in what seems another century.
Much of India is being turned upside down as the lower castes have tired of the ill treatment afforded them by the upper castes. The wealthy upper castes are not quick to let go of their privileges though and much of the countryside in areas like Bihar has become a battle zone for caste wars. It is when Dalrymple passes through this dangerous countryside which is ruled by police on the payroll of politicians with long criminal records that he thinks of the violent and dark age of Kali. In different ways the different parts of India are in the throes of monumental changes, this change often manifests itself in mysterious ways. The old ways are very much alive next to, within, and around the new ways. India has absorbed many invaders and within her borders contains many different religions, languages, races and for long periods of time there is peace and balance but in such a strictly regimented society where everyone has their allotted place and duty every change and shift makes everyone uneasy. The Moghuls for the most part peacably ruled both Muslim and Hindu, then the English ruled in their way taking over and consolodating an already existing imperial network and though the English left in 1947 their system in many ways remained in place and the full impact of their departure is perhaps just now being felt. India has restlessly begun to search for a new shape. Unfortunately an era of violence (to Dalrymple comparison with the Balkans is not an unfounded one) seems imminent.
In contrast to these dire realities and contingencies Dalrymple explores some fascinating hybrid civilizations that existed on the borderlands between peacefully comingling cultures. One on Reunion island and another in the north of Pakistan where a garrison of Alexanders troops mixed with Indians, Persians, Chinese, and Central Asians to create what became known as Gandharan civilization. Dalrymple explores their ruins at Peshawar.

In this relevant and political travelogue, it's hard to tell whether Dalrymple is playing devil's advocate in order to provoke the passions of his interview subjects, or if he can just be, at times, pigheadedly judgemental and narrow-minded. For example, he acts as if he doesn't recognize the symbolism of the first Kentucky Fried Chicken in Bangalore ("Three thousand tandoori restaurants in London don't seem to have destroyed British culture."); later, he questions Pakistan's failure to cede Kashmir to India based on India's superior military strength.

But you have to realize that the persona of Dalrymple as the interviewer doesn't really matter here. His itinerary is fearless (he visits conflict zones in both Sri Lanka and Pakistan), and his approach to history/travel writing through interviewing important political figures succeeds in making modern history come to life. Selflessly, he asks the toughest questions imaginable, as if he's looking for trouble (for example, insisting on probing the intra-familial feuding in Benazir Bhutto's family). The result is an intense and colorful portrayal of India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka- revealing the conflicts between Hinduism and Islam, between tradition and modernization, and between corruption and idealism.

While Dalrymple lightheartedly captures some of the colorful eccentricities of his subjects (e.g. listening to someone describe a holy man who reputedly appeared to be talking to a wall, when "if you got close enough you could hear what sounded like the wall talking to him"), at other times he ruthlessly exposes the character flaws of his subjects (at one point he describes a Tamil revolutionary in Sri Lanka as "the textbook revolutionary intellectual: quick-witted and intense, fond of gesticulation and dogmatic generalisation"; more colorfully, he portrays Benazir Bhutto ignoring his repeated attempts to interrupt her monologue with his own relevant questions).

In the end it's really up to the reader to discern the truth; for example, whether integrity really is a luxury in Pakistan, where police officers take bribes to augment their below-living-wage salaries, and whether it's okay for teenage girls to be so accepting of the violence that is part of their lives in Sri Lanka.

While Dalrymple's genius in this work stems from his in-depth research and use of dialogue to create lively characters, I found myself longing for the continuous narrative thread that makes another one of his works, City of Djinns, as readable as a novel and perhaps the greatest bit of travel and history writing I've read to date. But given the scope and format of this work, a series of political travelogues across the Indian subcontinent, it is right on the mark.

As human society careens into a new century amidst an onslaught of technological breakthroughs, consumer (re)values and mixed-message morality, all sorts of fire-breathers and reactionaries have come out of the woodwork, ancient texts in tow, to proclaim that the "End of Days" is nigh. Of course, such finger-wagging foreboding has been spouted by prophets/preachers for hundreds of years, but considering the rate of massive change occurring at the moment, and the massive change inevitable to come, these apocalyptic ruminations begin to have a seductive ring. Interestingly, most of the world's religions/belief systems contain some sort of Armageddon-theory, in which the wicked and faithless will be scathed & slain and their countless victims will emerge from the wreckage to claim their place in the new golden age. Foresight into the future or control-mechanism of those behind the scenes? What better way to encourage the downtrodden and dispossessed to quietly suffer than by programming into them that their day will come?

So it's not surprising that in conflicted caste-ridden India, with ninety percent of its groaning 1-billion-mark masses dwelling in abject poverty, that belief of The Age of Kali is at an all time high. Hindu cosmology proclaims that there are four successive ages, from the highest to the lowest, and at the moment the world is currently head-deep in (quote) "the Kali Yug, the Age of Kali, the lowest possible throw, an epoch of strife, corruption, darkness, and disintegration." In his travelogue _The Age of Kali_, William Dalrymple investigates the myriad socio-political problems behind this prevalent belief, touring the subcontinent with a keen eye and clever pen. From Untouchables in utter squalor to celebrities and drug-barons, Dalrymple details an enormous contrast of existence, sometimes literally from one page to the next. India is a place so geographically and culturally vast that no author could hope to adequately condense it all in one volume, but this book does give the reader a fascinating glimpse of how the ramifications of the past influence the present and possible future for the Indian subcontinent.

Dalrymple avoids the patronizing attitude and excessive descriptive prose of his contemporaries: each essay is clearly written, with passages of subtle elegance sliced neatly into the general flow of open-eye observations. The book is structured masterfully, as well: the topics broached are dark and disturbing, but Dalrymple segments caste-war and attempted genocide between the ridiculous posturing of India's first rap-roll star; tempers gang-rape and corruption with asides on the Hollywood-esque lifestyle of a popular harlequin writer and how the statues of ancestral Gods are bathed, shaved, and fed by devotees. This technique makes the horrors and atrocities digestible but in no way softens their impact: in my opinion, the contrast strengthens of overall impression that India is in a very precarious position.

For those planning to visit India in the near future (as I am), _The Age of Kali_ is an excellent introduction. For those simply interested in reading about a land of such baffling contradictory reports, this book is a lucid portrait of a land and people on the verge. Highly recommended.

If you have ever been to India or are intending to go, have a read of this. The "Age of Kali" is a Hindu reference to a descent into chaos, and many of these stories certainly bring vividly to life the confusion that reigns as India grapples with "modernisation" and the sheer enormity of governing a country with 600 million people.

The author has a good sense of humour and is a captivating writer. I get the feeling that I'll be reading plenty of his books in future. In fact I've just started on "From the Holy Mountain" which is shaping up as a good read as well ...

In this book, the famous travel-writer Dalrymple publishes a collection of his essays about South Asia that he has gathered from a decade of living in the sub-continent. There are six sections - North India, Rajasthan, the New India, The South, the Indian Ocean and Pakistan.

Be warned that the book, especially the first two sections are incredibly depressing. The horrors of some aspects of modern Indian living rarely make it to the front page so I found myself almost numb with shock as to the level of suffering described. Dalrymple details an Indian state in chaos, where most of the parliament is made up of convicted criminals who murder openly, where sectarian and caste disputes lead to regular massacres and where there's no infrastructure or safety. We are led through the hardships faced by the lower castes, the poverty and horrors of rural life and the immense corruption that's on a level that's fortunately hard to believe for an inhabitant of a "developed" country.

There are, however, some notions of hope. William describes the new prosperity emerging from the south as something with the potential to improve the lot of the whole country if it spreads. As usual, fans of Dalrymple will find plenty of digressions to the past, with his interest in the Muslim and colonial rulers of India showing through. My favourite thing about Dalrymple is how he presents both history and current affairs in an interesting way by finding the connections. This certainly occurs in this book, though most of it is modern.

The Age of Kali got me interested in world affairs again as you are thrust into the brutal techniques of groups such as the Tamil Tigers and various Hindu right-wing nationalists in India, as well as a reminder of the atrocities of Partition. The concise essays are examples of great journalism as Dalrymple gets up close to the people that make everything happen and shows you a view of the sub-continent that most aren't exposed to.

The book brings out many of the region's troubles but there is also a degree of optimism - it'll wake you up to issues of the region that aren't often enough discussed in most circles.

Dalrymple has the reputation of being one of the best Western writers today on India, and the reputation is well-deserved. This collection of essays written in the late 90's gives the Western reader a fresh look at this extraordinarily complex country, and pushes the reader into examining Western notions we take for granted. Take for example "Sati Mata," an account of a young widow accepting suttee, suicide on her husband's funeral pyre. Surely no woman would choose to do such a thing, surely she was drugged and forced--or maybe not. Dalrymple's sensitive examination of this practice, long officially banned, and his description of the life this woman had ahead of her as a widow, makes us wonder. Or take his chapter on caste wars--he explains how caste bears little relationship to the Western notion of class, how to rise above one's caste not only disrupts society, but breaks the cosmic cycle. Dalrymple paints a painful picture of this often cruel and violent society, especially for women--how impossible it is to prove a charge of rape, how cruelly the widows of the holy city of Vrindavan are exploited. At the same time the portrayals of modern India, of its first rock star and a writer of pulp romances, are clever and funny.

This book made me wonder how such a society can ever become truly democratic, a system which relies so heavily on the autonomy of the individual, the equality of all, a fair system of justice. India boasts it is the largest democracy in the world, but the descriptions of politics in these essays cast serious doubt on that statement. At the same time the author reminds us that Hindu civilization is the only of the great ancient civilizations to survive--certain aspects of Hindu life remain unchanged from what they were during greek and Roman times. And ancient Hindu art and literature survive today and are part of daily life and tradition. It is hard for the Western mind--almost impossible for an American mind--to grasp such longevity.

Particularly troubling to a reader today are the chapters on Pakistan, our ally in the War on Terror. Dalrymple's description is of a completely corrupt, lawless and dangerous society, where strongmen rule and governments are easily toppled. Will Americans once again regret who we considered an ally in a moment of crisis?

One Amazon reviewer says this is a book for those who love and those who hate India. You may come away from it feeling both emotions.

The first time I visited India (1984)it was a great experience, but I felt it could well be the last time I'd been there. The fact that we had to stay four more days because of another mistake by Air India (does that sound familiar?) might have had something to do with this. Well after that first visit I've been back four times, so I'm seriously addicted to this fascinating country and it's inhabitants. The moment I'm out of the airport and into the bustle I'm totally at home. Unlike lots of other travelogues William Daymple's book gives the same feeling of coming home, of feeling at home in India. And that's exactly the reason I like it very much.But even if you visited India and hated it, this book is a must. After reading it you know exactly why you never want to go back again. Or maybe you might one day?