Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India
by William Dalrymple
Year
2009
ISBN No.
9781408800614
No.of pages
304
Reviews
3
In this title, a Buddhist monk takes up arms to resist the Chinese invasion of Tibet - then spends the rest of his life trying to atone for the violence by hand printing the best prayer flags in India. A Jain nun tests her powers of detachment as she watches her best friend ritually starve to death. A woman leaves her middle-class family in Calcutta, and her job in a jute factory, only to find unexpected love and fulfilment living as a Tantric skull feeder in a remote cremation ground. A prison warden from Kerala becomes, for two months of the year, a temple dancer and is worshipped as a deity; then, at the end of February each year, he returns to prison. An illiterate goet herd from Rajasthan keeps alive an ancient 4,000-line sacred epic that he, virtually alone, still knows by heart. A devadasi - or temple prostitute - initially resists her own initiation into sex work, yet pushes both her daughters into a trade she now regards as a sacred calling. Nine people, nine lives. Each one taking a different religious path, each one an unforgettable story. Exquisite and mesmerising, and told with an almost biblical simplicity, William Dalrymple's first travel book in over a decade explores how traditional forms of religious life in South Asia have been transformed in the region's rapid change. A distillation of twenty-five years of exploring India and writing about its religious traditions, "Nine Lives" is a modern Indian Canterbury Tales.
Dalrymple's name is synonymous with the very best writing on India. His books are all bestsellers that have astounded the critics and won numerous awards An exciting new direction that will appeal beyond Dalrymple's usual market Dalrymple writes
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Member reviews
There are 3 review(s)
Nine Lives - Discovery of Sacred India in 21centur
It is another discovery of India . Not strictly India alone in the current and technical sense..as one of the nine lives is of a Tibetan monk and another one is of Sindh. Wonder what India's neighbours would react to the title.
I have no probs with it as I am an Indian and I found it a beautiful book. Grateful to D for throwing light on Must Kalandhar and removing what was, for me, the cobwebby incident of the Dalai Lama's flight and the consequences. Even about the Theyyam dancers of my own Kerala I was not so clear about before reading NL. I understand the Malayalam movie 'Kaliyattam' (adaptation of 'OTHELLO') better now.
Over-rated
Turn the cover of Nine Lives and you are overwhelmed with media reviews extolling it to the skies. And media includes Indian media who just can't resist kowtowing to a white man writing about India (oh my!). I prefer the vitriol of Naipaul to the saccharine sweetness of Dalrymple whose excuse for bad writing set out in the Introduction is that he has quoted his narrators without being judgemental! The book could have done with better editing and proof reading. The stories go on and on and each person whether a nun, a monk, a theyyam artiste or a baul singer, spouts philosophy like he or she is a fountainhead of all things spiritual. As I said before, Dalrymple takes all that he hears at face value. There are a few flashes of brilliance but they hardly light up the enveloping gloom...
Worth to be read 9 times
At a time when religion is becoming ever more conformist and intolerant, the diverse and syncretic world of the Indian subcontinent offers a stupefying spectrum of surviving sects and practices
One of the most striking commonalities among these 9 cults is the happiness, almost ecstasy, their adherents claim. This refrain returns again and again in Dalrymple’s interviews, as if no degree of suffering or deracination can quench the devotees’ conviction of the benevolence of their gods or dim their joy in taking to the road. But can this describe the common texture of their lives? Or is this only what they tell themselves?
In his introduction, Dalrymple says he yearns for his narratives to be free of authorial interference. But of course that can’t be. He not only creates their framework but inevitably, if unobtrusively, steers his interviews to the areas of his own interest. Yet these will be the areas of most readers’ interest too. The narratives Dalrymple unearths are fascinating and sometimes painfully moving, and he surrounds them with generous knowledge. This is the India we seldom see, populated by obscure people whose lives are made vivid by their eloquent troubles and reckless piety.
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