Nine Lives
Praise for
Nine Lives
‘The reader gets the sense that the author is driven by an unquenchable curiosity about a country he loves. Dalrymple never mocks his subjects. Indeed, his prose is often tinged with tenderness and a sense of longing. In flashes of brilliance, Dalrymple's work reveals an India still rich in religious experience, its spiritual quest – or rather, quests – still very much part of the warp and weft of daily life. Amid all the excitement about economic growth, an older India endures’ Sadanand Dhume,
Wall Street Journal
‘At its best travel writing beats fiction, firing the imagination with tales of foreign peoples drawn close by our common humanity … This is travel writing at its best. I hope it sparks a revival’ Ruaridh Nicoll,
Observer
‘
Nine
Lives
remains oddly gripping, and often very moving, in its first-person accounts of spiritually-minded people that Dalrymple meets on his travels across the subcontinent. Across the country, Dalrymple comes across instances of popular religiosity and the stubborn persistence of beliefs and ritual practices amid rapid change. Characters rarely allowed into contemporary Anglophone writing about India are given an opportunity to describe their deepest aspirations without the slightest hint of authorial condescension. They speak eloquently of the varieties of religious experience in India; its remoteness from the political mobilisation of religion, and its role as a marker of identity … The true vitality and continuity of Indian religions is still to be found where most of India’s one-billion-plus population lives. Still widely practised, folk religions and pluralist traditions constitute the norm rather than the exception … As Dalrymple’s book vividly illustrates, the country’s heterodox religious and philosophical traditions remain stronger than the imported idea of the homogenous nation-state, and have survived much of its immense violence’ Pankaj Mishra,
The National
‘For those who enjoyed Dalrymple’s earlier travel adventures, this latest book is written with the same verve and sense of immediacy. But it is perhaps more serious and its insight is more mature. Dalrymple has a great facility for creating a sense of place and bringing these colourful characters to life on the page, and the knack of drawing the universal from the particular. In a deft way he shows how the tensions, dilemmas and changes in the lives of these individuals illustrate the vast transformation of Indian society, so creating an overall work like “a modern Indian
Canterbury Tales
”. As eccentric as Chaucer's characters, the people who inhabit these pages are a deliciously motley crew. Vibrant and engaging, Dalrymple paints a compelling portrait of this complex sprawling giant of a country at a time of momentous change’ Peter Kirkwood,
The Australian
‘His characteristic wit and sympathy are fully evident in the interviews he has conducted … Beautifully illustrates the relationship between tradition and modernity in India’
Spectator
‘A fascinating text … It is an index of Dalrymple’s ability as a writer and his complex immersion in Indian cultures that he deftly avoids any hint of “Orientalism” … Dalrymple succeeds in juxtaposing the sacred and the secular without diverting the captivating flow of his prose. This is a rich book, teeming with fascinating characters and places worth visiting; it is a travel book that takes the reader not only across the wide expanse of the Indian subcontinent but also into intriguing aspects of India’s past and present. In the process, it also provides much insight into such topical and convoluted matters as Islamist fundamentalism’ Tabish Khair,
Biblio
‘Dalrymple’s storytelling skills and eye for the bizarre make this a fascinating and entertaining window onto spiritual India’ Anthony Sattin,
Sunday Times
Books of the Year
‘A travel writer of huge talent, even genius’
Outlook
‘A fast-paced book, moving from the perspective of a Jain nun contemplating the slow and voluntary relinquishing of her life, to the dilemma of the Dalit theyyam who shuttles between his job as a prison warden to his life as a man in the grip of religious ecstasy. These are compelling contemporary stories, and Dalrymple seems to be channelling a modern-day avatar of Kipling’
Business Standard
‘
From the start Dalrymple's writing has been characterised by rigorous scholarship as the self-effacing but brilliant young Scot stumbles across extraordinary cultures and adventures, and weaves them together into riveting, riotous stories rich in detail and understanding. In
Nine Lives
the author is on the road again, but deliberately takes a back seat, allowing his characters to tell their own spellbinding stories. Dalrymple's exhaustive research and deep feeling for Indian culture and ancient faiths mean he writes with clarity, erudition and engagement. With his guidance and context, each story reads like a rare insight into a multifarious and often impenetrable culture.
Nine Lives
is India at its most pure but also its most fragile. Dalrymple's stories always strive for a higher purpose than simply recounting adventures in the manner of so much contemporary travel writing. In
Nine Lives
, that purpose is to record and conserve these unique, fantastical histories, before they disappear forever’ Kendall Hill,
Sydney Morning Herald
‘Dalrymple is widely read and admired, and
Nine Lives
is both moving and radiant: an austere, piercing, and exciting book on nine astonishing religious lives’ Pradeep Sebastian,
The Hindu
To Sammy
Contents
Chapter 2 - The Dancer of Kannur
Chapter 3 - The Daughters of Yellamma
Chapter 4 - The Singer of Epics
Chapter 7 - The Maker of Idols
Chapter 9 - The Song of the Blind Minstrel
Also Available by William Dalrymple
The
idea for this book was born sixteen years ago, on a high, clear, Himalayan morning in the summer of 1993. I was corkscrewing my way up from the banks of the river Bhagirathi, along the steep sides of a thickly wooded valley. The track was soft and mossy, and it led though ferns and brackens, thickets of brambles and groves of tall Himalayan cedar trees. Small waterfalls tumbled through the deodars. It was May, and after a ten-day trek I was one day’s walk from my destination: the great Himalayan temple of Kedarnath, believed by Hindus to be one of the principal homes of Lord Shiva and so, along with Mount Kailash in Tibet, one of the two candidates for the Hindu Mount Olympus.
I was not alone on the road. The previous night I had seen groups of pilgrims – mainly villagers from Rajasthan – camping beside the temples and bazaars at the bottom of the mountain, warming their hands over small driftwood fires. Now, in the light of morning, their numbers seemed to have miraculously multiplied, and the narrow mountain track appeared like a great sea of Indian humanity. Every social class from every corner of the country was there. There were groups of farmers, illiterate labourers and urban sophisticates from north and south all rubbing shoulders like something out of a modern Indian
Canterbury Tales
. The rich rode horses or were carried up in
doolies
, a strange cross between a wicker deckchair and a rucksack; but the vast majority of poor pilgrims had no option but to walk.
Every half mile or so I would come across groups of twenty or thirty villagers straining up the steep mountain path. Barefoot, bent-backed old men with grey moustaches would be leading their veiled wives up the slopes; others, more pious, would be bowed in prayer before small shrines – often no more than piles of pebbles and a calendar poster.
Sadhus, India’s wandering holy men, also filled the road in dazzling profusion. As I wandered through the knee-high columbines, buttercups and hollyhocks of the high-altitude pastures, I passed a constant stream of lean, fit, hardy men with matted, dreadlocked hair and thick beards leaping up the track. Some travelled in groups; other travelled alone and many of these appeared to be locked in deep meditation as they walked, weighed down by heavy metal tridents, in an effort to find
moksha
in the clear air and crystal silence of the mountains.
As I clambered up the track, I fell into conversation with an ash-smeared and completely naked sadhu of about my own age. I had always assumed that most of the Holy Men I had seen in India were from traditional village backgrounds and were motivated by a blind and simple faith. But as soon as we began talking it became apparent that Ajay Kumar Jha was in fact a far more cosmopolitan figure than I had expected. Ajay and I walked together along the steep ridge of a mountain, with the great birds of prey circling the thermals below us. I asked him to tell me his story and after some initial hesitation, he agreed:
‘I have been a
sanyasi
[wanderer] only for four and a half years,’ he said. ‘Before that I was the sales manager with Kelvinator, a Bombay consumer electricals company. I had done my MBA at Patna University and was considered a high flyer by my employers. But one day I just decided I could not spend the rest of my life marketing fans and fridges. So I just left. I wrote a letter to my boss and to my parents, gave away my belongings to the poor, and took a train to Benares. There I threw away my old suit, rubbed ash on my body and found a monastery.’
‘Have you never regretted what you did?’ I asked.
‘It was a very sudden decision,’ replied Ajay. ‘But no, I have never regretted it for a minute, even when I have not eaten for several days and am at my most hungry.’
‘But how did you adjust to such a change in your life?’ I asked.
‘Of course at first it was very difficult,’ he said. ‘But then everything worthwhile in life takes time. I was used to all the comforts: my father was a politician and a very rich man by the standards of our country. But I never wanted to live a worldly life like him.’