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Dalrymple is a Journalist and a Historian is a visitor to Delhi and the book is as much a chronicle of his year spent in the city as a text on its history. The book is simultaneously an autobiographical account of his research on the city as a historian and a travel guide book. As he moves in a chronologically reverse direction from his present day, each subsequent period is established through the multiple imperialist regimes that established their capitals in Delhi. Dalrymple is trying to unravel Delhi as a city made up of many cities that existed in the various periods and its many different lived realities. Through the book he appears in search of survivors of every era in the architecture (Lutyen’s Delhi, the settlement of Trilokpuri, Chandni Chowk Havelis, The Tughlaqabad Tomb, Fraser’s house etc), the people (Balwinder Singh, Marion and Joe Fowler, the Hijras), the practices (calligraphy, cock-fighting, Unani medicine), the experts (Dr Jaffrey, Dr BB Lal) and the written accounts (Bernier’s Travels in the Mughal Empire, Twilight in Delhi by Ahmed Ali, Muraqqa’-e-Dehli by Kuli Khan and many others).

There is an overriding pattern in each chapter, beginning with the author’s personal discovery – a stroll through a monument or a precinct followed by interviews of survivors and practices that become a link to the past. These accounts are interspersed with explanations from the various literary sources that Dalrymple can access which range from translated Persian texts to Bernier’s accounts which provides for reporting and gossip about the Mughal court, to Ibn Battuta’s accounts of his stay in Delhi. Dalrymple also finds himself personally intertwined in the narrative through the discovery of his wife’s Scottish, East India Company employed ancestor, William Fraser’s personal letters which become a first-hand literary resource in the book.

But it is the author’s journey of discovery that becomes the agent to move the book along, told as a narrative account of his research and chronologically faithful to the year he spends doing the research in Delhi. In one sense, City of Djinns is a post-colonial text - A historical account of the National Capital of Delhi. Dalrymple’s fondness for Delhi is palpable and he seems in awe of the city, while at the same time trying to be factually truthful and scholarly in his writing. Through its varied literary sources that range from other historical travelogues and memoirs, literary fiction and translations the book is clearly making several inter-textual references. Further his use of monuments as a material text that embodies history as well as oral histories also makes the book a post-modernist text. The book also has interesting examples of micro-histories within the larger history, for example the history of the Eunuchs and the change in perception about them from the times of the Mahabharata to the Mughal period.

Dalrymple is also interested in how power plays out within the physical and cultural space of a city through the various survivors (monuments and people) he encounters. The past, for the survivors of those that were ever in power, is always idyllic. The book encounters all the pasts simultaneously in the author’s present and it becomes his job to interpret the nostalgia. As one meets the survivors living in the shadow of the once powerful past through the relatively fast paced narrative of the book, in some sense time collapses for the reader. Through the chapters the narrative unravels the patterns of epochal similarities, even though there are radical differences that dominate the major narrative of each era. Dalrymple himself can be accused of indulging in the nostalgia of the Imperialist in his account of the British period.

As a British man himself, he is a descendant of the coloniser and he comes at the subject with an outsider’s point of view often expressed in his account of things like Indian weddings or the bride’s role in an Islamic Nikaah. He never actually expresses the baggage of the coloniser, even when he reveals his wife’s ancestors to be active participants in the British colonial army. Yet his bias does come through in his accounts of the benevolent Fraser and his loyal natives. Or his favourable opinion on the more a bumbler- less a bigot Lutyen’s Capitol in comparison to Nehru’s Capitol in Chandigarh. In City of Djinn’s Delhi always stays exotic for Dalrymple despite the year he spends in the city. This also squarely puts the book in a way into Western writing on the Orient, which perhaps suggests that the book is intended for a Western reader. It is also possible to speculate that the author is casting himself in the role of his colonial ancestors by emulating their documentation of the colony. As a chronicler of Delhi’s history Dalrymple is trying to preserve its monuments and lost culture from being lost, saving the city from its present and future. Dalrymple even asks such a question of one of his interviewees when he asks her “Do you think British rule was justified?” (Dalrymple, 1993, p. 80).

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Text: Ekta Idnany Photos: © Sahil Latheef

Updated: Jul 5, 2021

Series Introduction:


We hope this blog post finds you well. Though the tough times are continuing and it seems like there's still a long way to go before we can resume our journeys, we decided to try different ways to go on sojourns. We bring you a series of posts on writings on cities by reviewing books that are particularly about cities. Starting here we revisit two cities and fantastic works that have been around for a while. As a way to inaugurate this series we bring you our thoughts on City of Djinns by William Dalrymple and Delirious New York by Rem Koolhaas. This introduction will follow with two separate posts on each of the books.



‘City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi’ (CD) by William Dalrymple and ‘Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan’ (DNY) by Rem Koolhaas are both books about the cities mentioned in their respective titles. While both books could be shelved as studies on the city, they also intersect with the specific disciplines that their respective authors are associated with. CD is a historical exploration of the city of Delhi at the intersection of the city and travel writing. Dalrymple is generally considered a historian however his book ‘In Xanadu: A Quest’ that preceded CD is categorised as travel writing. CD while not strictly travel writing is also often catalogued as travel writing or travel memoir. DNY occurs at the intersection of architecture + urban studies and history. Koolhaas, its author, is an architect but prior to that was a journalist and film script writer. Koolhaas also shot to fame with this book and it has since become necessary reading for students of architecture and urban design studies. Both Dalrymple and Koolhaas are not only making an impact on city studies through their books but also to culture studies and postmodern literature.



The titles of the two books are very relevant to what is in the books. In CD the author is looking at the city of Delhi as if it is inhabited by the spectres (Djinns) of history. The basic story is about the author’s discovery of the history of Delhi which takes on the form of a stream of consciousness memoir as well. DNY is labelled as a retroactive manifesto for Manhattan, New York as if to look at the city as a deliberate project that couldn’t have been designed any better than as it has been through opportunism. Since the title of the book indicates that the city is in a state of ‘delirium’, the writing takes on that exact quality as if the author is performing psychotherapy on the city. Staccato sentences follow one another, the tense confusing the reader about whether one is reading about the past, present or future. Facts are presented in almost fairy tale like way. The Illustrations in the book, found and those created by Madelon Vriesendorp for the book are particularly fantastical and surrealistic. Through both books the authors are attempting to take the reader into the psycho-social space that the city occupies in one’s mind as much as looking at how one occupies the physical space of the city.

 

Text: Ekta Idnany Photos: © Sahil Latheef


* This text was first written as course work for Ekta's PhD coursework

at CEPT University in April 2021.

Updated: Nov 17, 2020

Upcoming Design Event Announcement: The Emirates Architecture Open (in partnership with the Dubai Design Week) will take place on the 13th & 14th November, 2020.

The four projects covered in our first public design event in UAE offer a mix of - recently completed institutional, residential & mixed-use - architecture and landscape projects. Check out the poster for the complete listing of the projects that will be showcased during the weekend.


KINDLY NOTE: Register for any of these FREE events using this link - #EmiratesArchOpen - There will be NO on-site registrations.

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