City of Djinns by William Darlymple

My rating: ***

I was immediately reminded of Khushwant Singh’s Delhi as I finished City of Djinns recently and considering the former was written by an Indian and the latter by a Scotsman, City Of Djinns still holds itself quite strongly against Singh’s book. Being an Indian myself, I found Dalrymple’s descriptions and research behind each of the city’s buildings, forts, ruins, landmarks and milestones thoroughly honest and written in a genuinely enjoyable prose. In fact the author’s awe for the vast metropolis’ history and people touches a chord with the reader very early on.

Its written with a lot of passion, maturity (none of that prudishness or overtly judgemental tone that most travel authors adopt) and is edited brilliantly— which, despite its otherwise offbeat theme, makes it a page-turner. There were innumerable instances where, as the author walked through the ruins and tried to place the resplendent castle which once existed where the present ruin is, one gets nostalgic. Ditto for the times when he compares the now-predominantly Punjabi society with the pre-Partition Muslim society of the city.

Its certainly not the most comprehensive or exhaustive account of Delhi’s history (in fact by this yardstick, it even falls below Khushwant Singh’s book), but with his natural command for language and his ability to lend colours to parts of Delhi long forgotten or abused (esp Delhi’s connection to Mahabharata, Nizamuddin and Old Delhi), the author gives you a genuinely enjoyable, unpretentious, unindulgent memoir.

So for an uninhibited view of Delhi’s history– don’t look beyond Khushwant Singh’s Delhi AND City of Djinns.

In case I forgot to add, the cover of the paperback is a million times better than the shoddy and tacky one that goes with the hardcover (hell, even primary schoolbooks have better artist impressions of Taj Mahal!). Surely a book this good needed a better cover… to impress those millions of readers who still judge books by covers and I am glad the publishers have given the paperback just that.