New Found Love – William Dalrymple

I have always been an avid and voracious reader, devouring whatever is put up before me in double quick time, which irritated my parents no end and the last addition to the club is my lovely wife.

Kolkata in turn has been a blessing in many ways than one and the thing that I cherish the most is the time that I have had to catch up with my reading, which really suffered during my last days in Delhi, for monetary reasons as much as for lack of time!

I have, in the last couple of months discovered William Dalrymple and what a dolt I had been not to have discovered him earlier. I have already journeyed my way through four of his books, starting with the White Mughals followed by City of Djinns, The Age of Kali and From the Holy Mountains. Needless to say I have found all the four books to be immensely engrossing and I can’t, even if my life depended on it, choose one book that can score over the others. Each in itself is a whole, as any good book should be I guess, but then WD’s style of writing, use of language, fluidity etc etc is exemplary. The humongous and rigorous research that goes into each of his work results in each book weaving vivid and kaleidoscopic images in the readers mind, as they travel with WD between the past and the present interspersed with visions of the future.

I am fresh from ‘From the Holy Mountains’, and as I write I think of how much the eastern religions (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism etc etc) have woven their mystical carpet across the globe, and how the passage of time has swept along with it the finer mystical and secular parts of these religion; in a world that is known now more by its religious fanaticism than what religion in the earlier days wanted to achieve.

I am waiting to lay my hands on the ‘Last Mughals’ (the cost of the book is holding me back for sometime, but then for how long!) and I am already savoring the prospect of sinking my teeth into it. ‘In Xanadu’ is going to take some finding since I haven’t seen the title in the bookstores that I have been to.

PS: The cover pictures for his books have been taken from WD’s site, without his permission and I hope he wouldn’t mind it. It would be interesting to note though that the covers of the books that I have are different from the ones here! WD’s picture was harvested from a Google image search!

Here's WD's Website Link