Dalrymple: Age of Kali

assassination of Benazir Bhutto

Obviously, I like William Dalrymple - a  cheerful Scot who goes to awful places, meets terrible people, and gives a vicarious thrill to homebodies like myself.

In this volume, he circumnavigates the former Raj  in search of depressing stories:

*the decrepitude  of the once beautiful Lucknow
*the fate of Hindu widows in  gangster run ashrams
*the sweet old widowed Rajmata who incites sectarian violence
*the murder of an instructor at a Lucknow school dedicated exclusively to British culture.
*the gang rape of a social worker in Rajastan - and the subsequent destruction of the families whose men were responsible.
*the massacre of a low caste village by its neighboring Brahmins
*the self immolation of a beautiful young Hindu widow
*two thoroughly tasteless stars of popular culture: the Hindu rap artist Baba Sehgal and the pulp fiction, soft-porn writer, Shobhaa De
*American fast food in Bangalore - and violent protests against it.
*the worship of  Meenakshi in the great temple at Madurai. (which is rather colorful - especially the annual trip that the statues of the divine couple make to the temple's tank -- but why is it in this collection of depressing stories about cultural change ?)
*The transformation of charming old Hyderabad - a fabulously wealthy Muslim principality in south-central India - and a report on the rapes and 200,000 murders that accompanied its forced inclusion into India at the time of the great Partition.
*A nocturnal visit to Chottanikkara temple in Kerala where the Goddess miraculously exorcises malevolent spirits (especially the Yakshas from the haunted forests)  from mis-behaving teenagers.
*The Indianization of Goa, the former Portuguese colony - much to the dismay of the traditional Portuguese aristocracy who still live there.
*The kill-crazed teenaged Tamil Tigers - a  Maoist Tamil insurgency in Sri Lanka - still active at the time this book was written.
*The strange cult of St. Expedit on Reunion Island - the saint taking his name from postal markings on a package of unidentified holy relics that were once mailed there.
*The Pakistani political career of Imran Khan - a Pashtun cricket super-star who Quixotically defends the democratic ideals of the modern world in a medieval society.
*The career of another Pakistani politician, Benazir Bhutto, the first woman to lead a Muslim state in about 500 years. (this was written before assassination interrupted her comeback)



All of which reminds me of that international hit film from the '60s - "Mondo Cane" - a lurid view of bizarre practices  in exotic places.

But still - the author actually interviews the politicians and celebrities mentioned above - even getting himself driven into the jungle camps of the Tamil Tigers.