Click to play videoNew Delhi: Self-professed Dilliwallah, William Dalrymple is back on the literary scene with Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India. The book tracks nine stories across the breadth of the country, which marks his return to travel writing.
After 30 intensive interviews across the country, Dalrymple narrowed down on nine stories.
"The book is a look at how religion in India is changing today. A Buddhist monk, a Jain nun, a Theyyam dancer - nine different people show how modernity and India shining has impacted on traditions in different ways," says he by the way of explaining his book.
He said that he did not think he ran the risk of exoticising India, given that his characters were not mainstream.
"India's not just middle-class India. There is a kind of prickliness in the middle class about something out of its ken, to cover stuff in the villages, the spiritual. I don't know why they make the middle class uncomfortable. There is no question in my mind that to write about the Bauls (a group of mystic minstrels) in Bengal or the people making idols in small towns in Tamil Nadu or prison warders who do Theyyam dancing two months in a year is legit. These are completely legit subjects as far as getting inside of peoples' heads and trying to understand a country and study religion has to be a legit subject," says he.
The interviews were done in eight languages, with the help of interpreters who often helped Dalrymple capture insights into fairly private universes. Some of these stories are fairly extraordinary - whether it's prison warder Hari Das, who spends a couple of months every year revered as a Theyyam dancer in Kerala, or whether it is the Bauls, whose music Dalrymple has enjoyed for years.
His new book is long-format-journalism-meets-travel-writing, with a cultural and historical perspective - something Dalrymple clearly has a knack and an audience for.
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