In bandit-infested badlands north of Lahore
in Pakistan, in Bihar and in parts of Uttar Pradesh, Dalrymple
finds an anarchy that makes him feel as though Kali Yug is
really upon us. And yet, in other parts of the subconti- nent,
he finds peace and prosperity.
Granted access to movers and shakers in the
subcontinent, Dalrymple interviews Laloo Prasad Yadav
enroute a flight to Patna, and is invited to breakfast by
Rajmata Vijayaraje Scindia. He finds that "charm and
sweet-ness are clearly not guarantees against either violent
nationalism or the most xenophobic religious fundamentalism and
bigotry".
He joins 72 "fat-cat industrialists" and
their glitzy wives, actors and starlets, glamour journalists,
society painters and producers on the boat Shobha De
sends to pick up her guests. He meets Imran Khan and
finds a man of intriguing contradictions – at once extrovert and
shy, arrogant and modest, austere and sensual, jet-set, yet
primitive. And discovers Benazir Bhutto’s love for
romantic novels, of the Mills & Boons genre.
He visits Lucknow where the courtly graces
and refinement are a distant dream in the eyes of the old
timers, and the city of widows in Varanasi where he meets women
who could have walked out of Deepa Mehta’s Water.
In Bangalore, he is dazzled by the many pubs and malls.
Knowing that he treads dangerous ground in this compilation,
Dalrymple wants readers to know that this is a work of love.
About an area of the world he reveres like no other, and in
which he has chosen to spend most his years since he first came
to India as an impressionable 18-year-old.
