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INTERVIEW
"India
is the easiest country in the world to be a writer"
"I
was very much against the idea of India," says William Dalrymple,
author, The City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi. In conversation with INDIA
TODAY's Sonia Faleiro, he talks about his old girlfriend, Delhi and his
"enormously exciting" next book, The White Moghuls.
It
wasn't enough that A City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi proved so enormously
successful that according to its author, William Dalrymple, it regularly
beats God of Small Things and A Suitable Boy in the popularity stakes.
The book, first released in 1993, acquires what is perhaps an unnecessary
lease of life with photographer Agnes Montanari and art historian and
wife of the Belgian Ambassador to India, Nathalie Trouveroy, capturing
its text through superbly etched black and white photographs in the exhibition,
City of Djinns: An Album. Dalrymple had just completed a research/holiday
trip with his wife, artist Olivia Fraser, through Goa, Bijapur and Hampi,
before air-dashing to Delhi to inaugurate the exhibition. Between signing
numerous dog-eared copies of his books and bemoaning stress caused by
mundane problems-- I'm bald. People in Scotland go bald by the time they
turn 18. It's a tragic, genetic disaster. He spoke to INDIA TODAY's Sonia
Faleiro about being back in India and his next book, The White Moghuls.
Excerpts:
Q. You
were 17 when you first came to India. What was your impression of the
country then?
A. As a 14-year-old I was very much against the idea of India. My
elder brother, Rob, who is now a Catholic priest in Scotland, was a great
India enthusiast. He lived here for a couple of years and filled our house
with south Indian tack. In fact, he was also very fond of cricket, which
I never played as a result! It was an accident that brought me here and
within a week, my life changed. It's a cliché, but India does change
your life. Had I not come here I would have been a banker or a chartered
accountant in London.
Q. In
The City of Djinns you stated that not one private Lutyen's bungalow would
remain undemolished by the turn of the century. That has obviously not
happened. What are the changes you recognise?
A. The Government area has survived but it's going. Delhi does change.
I feel very complicated when I come back, because Delhi to me is like
an old girlfriend, an old lover. You want her to stay the same, ever faithful
to you even after you go away, but you really can't expect her to. I feel
personally outraged and unreasonably possessive when a shop has changed
or when a new block comes up. Which is ridiculous because I am a foreigner
and I don't live here anymore. Despite that, I still feel that Delhi is
my city.
Q. Why
did you leave?
A. We have three small children who are all badly asthmatic and I
didn't think Delhi is a good place to bring them up. Furthermore, I'm
not sure that an expat's life with lots of servants is very good for children.
It's very important for them to know where they're from. (Dalrymple now
lives in London, although he spends three months annually travelling.)
Q. What
is The White Moghuls about?
A. It's been called The White Moghuls as a way of telling the story
of several characters---Englishman, French and Italian---who were seduced
by the very attractive Mughal court culture and absorbed into it. The
familiar story of the glaring conquest of India is one we have all been
brought up with, but the story of the Indian conquest of so many Britons
is not so familiar. The White Moghuls, if I can do justice to it, will
by a long, long, long way be the best book I've ever written.
It's primarily about James Achilles Kirkpatrick. He came here a cocky,
imperialistic upper-class Brit intending to conquer India, other than
the states which were being annexed wholesale by the British. I think
he believed he could take over Hyderabad. But on his arrival he fell in
love with the Hyderabadi princess, Khair-un-Nissa. He secretly converted
to Islam, was circumcised, and, while remaining a British citizen, became
a secret agent working for the Nizam against the British. After Kirpatrick
died, Khair-un-Nissa was seduced by his assistant and like Madam Butterfly,
kept as his mistress on the coast. All this, after having been a great
figure in Hyderabad. It's a long, exciting, weepy sort of masala story
with a most extraordinary resonance. What it says about the Brits and
the Indians, and the image that it gives us of the period, are very different
from what one would expect.
Q. Is
it a biography?
A. No, because it focuses on about five years of Kirkpatrick+s
life. Specifically of when he turned away from British imperialism and
became a Muslim nobleman working as a double agent for the Nizam.
Q. When
will the book be published?
A. I've been researching it for three years and have done all the
travelling. All that remains for me is to write it. (Published by HarperCollins,
The White Moghuls is scheduled for autumn 2002.)
Q. What
are the sources of your stories?
A. Reading and travelling together. They feed off each other. The
business of travelling makes me want to read, and reading makes me want
to travel and see more. I find that as I read less and less fiction I
read more and more of Indian history. Kirkpatrick was initially one character
in a series of portraits on people like William Fraser. Later, more and
more extraordinary material
came up.
Q. The
Fraser letters (Olivia is a descendant of Persian scholar and legend William
Fraser and Dalrymple has
access to a library full of personal letters) were a stroke
of luck. Have you had similar luck whilst researching Kirkpatrick's life?
A. The wills of the period are the biggest revelation. For example,
during 1780-1800 one-third of the wills (of Englishmen in India) left
everything to their Indian wives. The idea that the British lived apart
is an utterly false one that was created by the Victorians---they've rewritten
history and it's been accepted by national historians. The reality was
that there was great hybridity---a huge amount of inter-marriage---and
the women they married seemed to be like Khair-un-Nissa---mogul noblewomen.
And it's not a straightforward case of imperial exploitation either, because
these women inherited very large sums of money, a house, 15 carriages,
a huge quantity of jewels
The wills were often terribly moving documents----to my beloved Khair-un-Nissa
who stayed with me for 40 years, bore me six beautiful children, who I
loved like no other woman--- Incredibly moving.
Q. In
the City of Djinns you mention that Imperial India is
a subject that continues to obsess the British whereas the Indians have
successfully managed to shed their colonial past. Do you feel the same
way now?
A. I think it's gradually beginning to dawn on the Brits that there's
more to India than the Raj. But it's a slow, trickling process. When we
were living here, we saw Brits arrive in not quite solar topis but in
long khaki shorts, subliminally taking in all those attitudes they had
been brought up to believe. But it takes only a week here for them to
change their perception and realise that+s all ancient history.
Q. But
it has also been said that Britain, unlike the US, has never been comfortable
with its immigrant population, and never completely absorbed it.
A. I don't agree. I think that a great change is being brought about
by the new generation of British-born Indians. The first generation that
came in the 1960-70s were shopkeepers brought up on the margins of British
life. Their children, who have been educated in British schools, are writers,
BBC reporters, bankers, and businessmen. It's one thing when you're dealing
with people who work in cornershops and speak broken English and another
when they're your lawyer, bank manager or a writer.
They are also the single best-educated group in Britain---75 per cent
of Brit-Asians go on to higher education as opposed to 40 per cent of
white British. We also have the highest rate of
inter-racial marriages in the world, which I think is the ultimate telling
thing.
Q. The
City of Djinns, numerous essays in The Court of the Fish-Eyed Goddess
and your next book suggest a particular fascination for Muslim India.
Is that true?
A. I find all Indian history gripping although my last couple of books
do seem to centre on Muslim India. Then again, Delhi has always been a
Muslim city. In fact, my next work is about Christian India, of St Thomas
in Kerala.
Q. As
a foreigner has it been easier or harder for you to get people to talk
about sensitive topics like Partition and the anti-Sikh riots of 1984?
A. No, it was never tough. India is the easiest country in the world
to be a writer. People have amazing stories to tell and Partition is something
that people do want to talk about. Also, it's not merely foreigners who
have privileged access to it, Urvashi Butalia's book on Partition is one
example of that. It's just a different perspective.
Q. After
spending five years in Delhi and writing two books about India do you
now feel like an insider?
A. Yes and no. Yes, because I spend my life writing about India, and
every day go to the library where I'm surrounded by 70 per cent desis
to 30 per cent Brits. And no, because I don't live here anymore and feel
more distant than I was five years ago when I would have certainly have
answered yes.
Q. Do
you speak Hindi?
A. (Laughing) Thoda, thoda. When I was in Hyderabad I was
muttering around, ungrammatical and completely incomprehensible. Years
ago, I used to speak Hindi better.
Q. Do
you still love Delhi?
A. Absolutely. I've never understood why people have problems with
it. Delhites are constantly looking over their shoulders to Mumbai or
Calcutta. Just walk outside. Here we are right (French Cultural Centre,
Aurangzeb Road) in the middle of the city which, for all the talk of pollution,
is very pretty and as glorious as any other part of the world.
Q. The
City of Djinns that you wrote about in 1993 is fast disappearing. Do you
believe that the book will one day become a definitive historical account
of the city in the 1990s, as Ahmed Ali's Twilight in Delhi is for Delhi
in 1947?
A. A lot of the Delhi that I visited even eight years ago is no
longer there, it's all destroyed. A lot of people I spoke to are no longer
alive---the Anglo-Indians, the old ladies in Shimla. It's very sad. It
won't be the definitive book but it will be a record of the Delhi that
was in the 1990s.
Q. What's
it like working with your wife (Olivia illustrates his books)?
A. It's lovely, though right now she is a little upset because I am
so obsessed with this book. This is the first time ever, I think, that
she has resisting reading every draft. But it's lovely to have someone
to bounce ideas off.
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