Tuesday, February 8, 2011

City of Djinns

I am very lucky to have come across this book called the 'City of Djinns'. It is a travelogue by writer William Dalrymple who visited Delhi in the nineties and lived there for 6 years. This book has opened my eyes to the lost history of the great capital of India. I am still not even half way through the book and I cannot keep it down. The characters are very beautifully portrayed and each one of them tells an era of Delhi or a story which I would never have otherwise known.
All Indians should read this book to know more about the great city. The book is more like a novel than a history lesson and is very entertaining.
I feel so proud to be part of such rich history just by being born in this great country.
Reading this book, one can realize and live through the most elegant and pristine heights the city has experienced and also the most nasty downs and ruins.

Coincidentally one of my best friends is also reading a book by Williams Dalrymple called the 'Nine Lives' and she tells me how awesome that one is.

This weekend I got a movie named 'Amu' in the Netflix mail. I must have added the movie long time back. But the interesting part was that the movie is a story of a girl returned from US who is visiting her relatives in Delhi (coincidence once again). She has been told that she was an adopted child all her childhood. During this visit to the city she goes to many lengths to find out about her parents and her past. The movie does showcase the lives of people in Delhi during the 1984 riots after Prime minister Indira Gandhi's assassination. The book however I found to be 10 folds better than the movie in depicting the gruesome reality during that phase.

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