Review: William Dalrymple's Nine Lives
You should read this book. For one, it has several pages devoted to Tantric sex, and not "the sort of faddish Tantra cults embraced by Western rock stars, with their celebration of aromatherapy and coitus reservatus." No, this is the Tantra that acts like a "booster rocket" to bring its practicioners to a "divine experience."William Dalrymple treats Tantra as he treats the rest of his subjects: artfully, tastefully, stepping aside to give us a glimpse of Indian culture. His writing is straightforward, leading you to understand the previously incomprehensible (did he really just write a book about Indian religion?). Of course, such effortless-appearing writing involves a lot of footwork, and it is clear Dalrymple has done his. Each chapter tells the story of an Indian devotee: a Tantric, a Baul, a Sufi Muslim, and others that do not translate easily into American English. The volume of his speakers' words hints at the hours he must have spent interviewing them. They guide the story; they introduce and explain themselves. Dalrymple as a character appears only to set the stage, to paint a picture of how he found the devotee and where they are sitting (in a home compound, on a rug under a tree, at a mystic performance) before pulling the curtain back to showcase each life.And you cannot stop reading. Whether or not you have ever heard of the Indian practice of performing the phad or saintly epic storytelling, you will want to find out how a man can chant for 8 hours at a time, perform miracles, and then return to his day job as a well-digger. Dalrymple knows he has good material, and he is not stingy. We hear all the gory details (though, unfortunately, the practicioners of Tantra cannot share all their secrets).Making comprehensible something so far from Western experience--dare I say exotic?--is what Dalrymple excels at. Clear sentences parse entangled ideas; for instance, he draws a tight distinction between South Indian Chola idols and Chola poetry when he meets with a family of famous idol makers:
If Chola poetry is sometimes explicit, then in Chola sculpture the sexual nature of the gods is strongly implied rather than directly stated. It is there in the extraordinary swinging rhythm of these eternally still figures, in their curving torsos and their slender arms. The figures are never completely naked; these divine beings may embody human desire...but...the Chola deities, while clearly preparing to enjoy erotic bliss, are never actually shown in flagrante; their desire is permanently frozen at a point before its final consummation.
The neat combination of poetic imagery and necessary explanation continues throughout.Dalrymple has a reputation for writing smart Asian travel narratives and it is well-deserved; he is one of very few people who can explain Eastern anything to Western minds. But he fails on a few points of Indian description. First, he refuses to use the new Indian names for cities that were formerly colonized. Second, his pictures of India all too often paint a romantic countryside. When he describes a famous city in South India, he writes
...Buffaloes are wallowing on the sandbanks of the Kaveri, and bullock cars trundle along red dirt roads, past village duck ponds and the tall, rain-wet fans of banana trees. Old women in blue saris sit out on their verandas, while their granddaughters troop along the roads with jasmine flowers in their hair...Overlooking this landscape for miles in every direction is the vimana pyramid-spire of the great Tanjore temple. It rises 216 feet tall above the horizontal plain, dominating the flat-roofed village houses and the farmland round about as completely as the cathedrals of the Middle Ages must have once dominated the landscape of Europe
Google "Tanjore" (or better yet, it's real name, Thanjavur) and you will find that this temple also a smoggy city, and that vehicles blast past those blue-saried women, blowing dust into their jasmine flowers.Still, the approachability and beauty of the book will tempt you to visit and talk to these fascinating folks yourself. Or at least hunt down some more books on Indian religion.Alicia de los Reyes