Book Review of Nine Lives by William Dalrymple

"Twenty years ago, when my first book, In Xanadu, was published at the height of the eighties, travel writing tended to highlight the narrator: his adventures were the subject; the people he met were reduced to the background. With Nine Lives, I have tried to invert this, and keep the narrator firmly in the shadows"

And so William Dalrymple sets out meandering through ancient alleys and arid deserts to find his way to his characters. We take the journey with him mesmerized by the sights, sounds and sometimes smells of the lands so near and yet so unfamiliar. The characters he finds are deeply spiritual but varied. Often, they have wandered away from their homes, severing their last few ties to the mundane to step into a parallel spiritual universe that promises an understanding of the mysteries of life in a way that "regular" life cannot. They are women and men attempting to understand their fractured pasts and trying to find a spiritual salve for their aching present.

What we then get is something that a National Geographic or Discovery channel program will be hard-pressed to attempt successfully. That the presence of a camera alters behavior of subjects is a well documented fact, that a white man in a South Asian semi-rural set-up would incite curiosity is also understandable (and acknowledged by the author). Dalrymple does not attempt a fly on the wall narrative. He connects with his subjects, compassionately and perceptively, building up their stories, one careful piece at a time, lending them dignity that they are often denied by their immediate world. Dalrymple empathises with the dilemma of his characters and yet does not fail to see the irony of their condition. Rani Bai, a devdasi, is saving up for a house she is unlikely to ever live in. Mohan who roams the deserts of Rajasthan, singing the story and praise of Pabuji, a local deity and the guardian of his people believes that his family is blessed with the ability to cure. Yet he finds all hospital doors closed to him and not even a painkiller to alleviate his final suffering. A Theyyam dancer commands the respect of villagers who touch his feet for the two months in a year that he performs in God's image. For the rest of the ten months, as a low-caste well digger, he is shunned and not allowed inside the houses of the same people.

Dalrymple's love for history comes through, as does his curiosity to see how time, place and politics have metamorphosed culture. In an attempt to understand these people who seem to have fallen through the cracks, he goes back to earlier works by historians, classicists and travelers and even puts forth questions to the aunts of the household where he is staying. In the end he offers no answers to the reader, only more questions-What role does faith play in rapidly modernizing South Asia? What space does the local deity of a diminishing tribe hold, in the devotional mindscape, when the television is blaring images of homogenized Hindu Gods? What choices really mean when the options are between a well paying "computer" job and following in the family tradition of idol making that goes back several centuries? What is atonement when your sin is love?

Nine Lives is a scholarly and readable collection of mini-biographies of people that exist amidst us but are often invisible to us, told with much grace and care.