Travelogue

“The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.” it is also said that a journey of a
thousand miles is more instructive than reading ten thousand scrolls. Both statements evoke the close
equivalence between reading and travelling, and apparently a book about a journey is as well as the
journey itself, as if the two were a single, inseparable whole. Megasthenese, Ptolemy, Fa-Hien, Hiuen
Tsiang, Alberuni, Ibn Battuta, Marco Polo and many other foreigners have given an extraordinary
account of ancient India in their works. India continues to allure the writers from the West even today.
William Dalrymple is one such travel writer who got deeply interested in the history and culture of
India and wrote about six books on it. City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi, his second book and the first on
India is a travelogue shaped like a novel which digs up the history of India‘s capital, Delhi. City of
Djinns is categorized as a travelogue with a tinge of history but it seems to be more of
a personal memoir. The complex structure of the book holds together an unusual
blend of history and travel experience.

Style
Dalrymple’s oeuvre is interesting because of the ways in which all of its
components function together. His shift between genres, modes and media is
complex and continuing. The move from travel writing to narrative history, for
example, is not simply chronological: Dalrymple participates in the two genres
simultaneously, as they run parallel to and intersect with each other in complex
ways. Dalrymple’s style of writing is governed by post-modernist characteristics.
He explores a new style of writing history rather than the traditional one. From
its study, it becomes clear that though he keeps himself abreast with the trends
of academic history by employing various primary and secondary source
materials, his approach to historical facts and his manner of presentation is
different . He goes with the new style of writing history which employs
“narratives‟. In other words, Dalrymple writes history in the style of a fiction
writer who narrates the plot of a story. Dalrymple in an interview with Times of
India correspondent Lata Srinivasni says that, “ I try to write the kind of history
books that I enjoy and admire- which is based on years of primary research but
which is written with a lightness of touch and a literary style which reads as well
as any literary novel.

The author, in his witty and nuanced memoir, captures a year spent in Delhi
discovering its hidden charms and reconstructing the city’s colourful if often
violent past. He meets Pirs who can overpower djinns, follows the eunuchs on
their rounds and grasps the hierarchy of their community, witnesses partridge
fights in an old Muslim cemetery, visits Unani hakims in Ballimaran, narrates
colourful stories about nautch girls, courtesans and their noble patrons, and
watches whirling dervishes go into a trance.

Why did he come to India

The very title City of Djinns suggests Dalrymple‘s inclination toward the
mythological, mystical, unreal and mysterious facet of India which is evident in
the lines. Moreover the city-I soon discovered – possessed a bottomless seam of
stories: tales receding far beyond history, deep into the cavernous chambers of
myths and legends ... but for me, Delhi always exerted a stronger spell. I lingered
on! Thus, we can say that the words like “myth”, “legends, “spell” connote a sense
of enchanting, spiritual and fantastical side of India which has interested
Dalrymple like any other colonizer.

The very idea of writing about Delhi came to his mind from the story narrated by
a priest Pir Sadr-ud-Din. According to this priest, Delhi has witnessed many
holocausts and dangers. It has been burnt by the invaders but still this city
stands intact because the djinns also love Delhi. They cannot see the place
deserted and ruined. Djinns are supernatural beings with extra ordinary powers.
Dalrymple finds special delight in delving deep into the suspended
consciousness of legendary, mystical and mythical Delhi in its different phases.

“Delhi, it seemed at first, was full of riches and horrors: it was a labyrinth,
a city of palaces, an open gutter, filtered light through a filigree lattice, a landscape of domes, an
anarchy, a press of people, a choke of fumes, a whiff of spices” (City of Djinns: 7-8)

Theme

The theme of the book as Dalrymple mentions in the prologue is

-a representation of a city disjointed in time, a city whose
different ages lay suspended side by side as in aspic, a city of
djinns.

Chronological order
The historical events in City of Djinns are organized in reverse chronological order.
Dalrymple in his conversation with Tim Young which is mentioned in the edited book
by Giselle Bastin, Journeying and Journalling Creative and Critical Meditation on
Travel Writing, says,

―I spiral down into the history of Delhi. Each chapter takes you back a stage.... It
was very difficult to write, particularly putting the history going backwards because
often so much of what happens in history is found by what has happened before it
....‖(4-5). It is like walking down a ladder in the historical consciousness.

Dalrymple writes history in the backward chronological order. In an interview with

Tims Young , the writer says , ―Delhi does seem to act like a sort of fly paper on
time. Time doesn‘t seem to have its destructive power in Delhi in the way it does in
some other places‖(42). He writes that the travel book gives him an opportunity to tell
the story of a past through the remains of it that are still alive but he does it in reverse
chronological order.
The author William Dalrymple peels back the layers of Delhi’s history, in a travelogue that
goes back in time, from the 1984 riots, to Indraprastha, the mythical city of the Pandavas. He
traces the antecedents of the city’s famous monuments. It opens up a long and
bloody history of conquerors and blood-shed, of periods of glory and
despondency, of exile and re-settlement. Darlymple’s journey touches upon the
after effects of the Indo-Pak partition on its inhabitants, the Sikh revolt in the
80s. From contemporary history, he goes back to the Raj, and extensively covers
the period which saw a rapid change in the British attitude to the natives. All this
happened within a century. The Whites who came either as part of the East India
Company or as scholars, were reverential to the Mughals. They imbibed the
Orient culture, married Indian women.... But as the power of the East India
company grew and the British conclusively established their rule in most of India,
the equations drastically altered, and the natives were all shunned. The Anglo-
Indians, in fact, suffered the worst blow, as they found no acceptance on either
side.
From the British era, the book travels back to the luxuriant Shah Jahan period,
where a bloody battle for succession broke out between his two sons Dara Shikoh
and Aurangazeb. It was also a period where the Mughals were at the zenith of
glory and wealth. Yet, the author observes that this outward refinement in art and
etiquette was a cover for some of the most crude and heinous of crimes
committed.
Delving deeper into Delhi’s history, the author gives vivid portrayals of Ibn
Battuta, a Muslim, Moroccan traveller, who wrote about his journeys and
Tughluk Khan, one of the most barbaric rulers of the 14th century. He closes his
book by devoting only a few pages to the ancient history of Delhi and this is where he brings the great
Hindu epic Mahabharata into focus. This was the time when Delhi was the Indraprastha –the great
capital of the Pandavas which the author calls as ‘the Indian Troy’ (323), was unparalleled in its
grandeur and was termed as ‘a new heaven’ by Vyasa. The book ends with Dalrymple and Olivia’s
visit to Nigambodh Ghat and the hot Indian summer giving way to pleasant monsoon showers.
Dalrymple’s City of Djinns concludes on a note of celebration and reverence for India’s ancient Hindu
past.

Tone and mood

The author’s tone is not academic or preachy. Instead he takes the reader
along with him on his journey around the city. He keeps shifting back and
forth in time, talking about the present-day Delhi too — the cultural biases,
the festivities and celebrations, the marriages, the demography and how it
came about, the food and several other nuances of life in the capital city. In
typical western style, Delhi’s weather inspires a good deal of lush embroidered
descriptions of coppery skies, dust talcumed greenery, and the enervating heat
of the summer. Each chapter deals with a period in Delhi’s history, in tandem
with a season of Delhi’s weather.
How he engages the audience/effect on the reader

Throughout the book Dalrymple proceeds in a way by which he can capture the imagination of his
readers. He supplants history with lores and anecdotes which actively work to reconstruct our opinions
about the British and the Mughals as well. Thus he effectively feeds his readers with the information
which creates a positive view of the British colonizers and a negative image of the Mughal presence in
India. Debbie Lisle argues “that the hegemonic discourses of difference that arose during colonial rule
continue to anchor contemporary narratives about travel” (Lisle: 277). Working on these lines
Dalrymple also effectively establishes the western hegemony by establishing the inherent differences
between the English West and the Indian East; be it in architecture, governance, culture, behavior and
moral codes of the two. Following the tradition of western Orientalists; Dalrymple without being
directly judgmental portrays Muslim Mughals as promiscuous, cruel and incestuous. Repeated
references have been made in the travelogue; through the use of anecdotes and by quoting ‘fanciful
speculations’ by Western travelers like Manucci and Bernier regarding Shah Jehan’s fondness for her
eldest daughter Jahanara Begum, that the great Mughal emperor nurtured incestuous desire for his
eldest daughter :

“Many contemporary writers comment on Shah Jehan’s legendary appetites:

the Emperor’s lust for his daughter Jahanara, his penchant for seducing the
wives of his generals and relations, and the numbers of courtesans invited
into the palace to quench the monarch’s thirst when his expansive harem proved insufficient” (231)

CONCLUSION

Dalrymple’s immense popularity as a travel writer lies in the nostalgic and Orientalist representation of
India. The author succumbs to the common prejudices and misconceptions which are often attributed to
Muslims and the east and also makes effective use of western hegemonic strategies in City of Djinns.
Dalrymple is writing constantly with the baggage of the colonizer and hence wittingly or unwittingly
lands up comparing the Mughal India with the British and in the process establishing the supremacy of
the later over the former. Despite the use of Orientalist tropes the book gives a remarkable insight into
the history and culture of the city and also broadens the understanding of the reader about the enigma
that is Delhi.