An 18thcentury love story woven with streaks of eternal love, faithfulness, infidelity, power of wealth and avariciousness. Manon Lescaunt named after the book’s central character Manon Lescaunt is a woman who’s sent off to a convent to become a nun against her wishes. How she is spotted by a youngster of her age who instantly falls in love with her charm and beauty and thus starts the saga of love. Youngsters in their teens as they are, fall prey to the illusion of living with each other, completely desolate from the rest of the world and their kin. They fail to see through the facts of life and norms of society where a man has to earn his bread and abstain himself from depending solely upon the luxuries and wealth that he has acquired from his well-wishers.
Manon’s consistent display of her love for luxury and his beloved leave the reader considering a scenario of split identity where on the one end she has extreme love for Grieux and at the same time she does not think twice about dumping him for somebody who’s wealthier and can shower her with all possible luxuries every time Grieux is touched upon by forms of poverty. At three events Mamon walks out of his life leaving him in utmost despair and murkiness so very casually and the very next moment one finds him bringing her back in his life by few exchanges of affection and love.
Trechery on Mamon’s part at all those three events thereafter followed by treachery on Mamon’s and Grieux’s part once they get together in taking revenge from the person who’s mistake is to develop feelings for this beautiful creature and offer her his wealth showering in place of her company, are the lows that this love saga touches throughout the entire narration.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
"Delhi in Comparison" - A book review comparison of Delhi-by Khushwant Singh and City of Djinns - by William Dalryample
“The water was now coming down in great rushing torrents. Instantly it drenched us to the skin, before pouring down the steps of the ghat and splashing into the river at the bottom.
With a noise like a bursting dam, the world slowly dissolved into a great white waterfall”
These last lines from the Dalrymple classic “The City of Djinns” mark an end to the Schottish man’s one year long stay in Delhi along with putting an end to his illustrious novel on the city. William Dalrymple lived in Delhi for four years starting in 1989. Much of his research during that trip is behind "City of Djinns." Although the book is ostensibly about a year's stay of the author and his wife in Delhi, Dalrymple shapes the novel around a historical tour through several layers of the city’s history similar to what Khushwant Singh has attempted to do rather successfully, with his novel “Delhi”.
City of Djinns is based upon an exhaustive city tour that happens over changing weathers, describing the city’s extremities in terms of seasonal and climatic changes.
The book starts off as the couple move into a rental apartment on an old property and meet the landlady (Mrs. Puri, her handicapped husband) along with a gaggle of house servants who water the plants and bring in bed tea, and a taxi driver with attitude named Balvinder Singh.
But the author soon steps back from these little character sketches to reveal his enormous canvas: he talks to several survivors of the anti-Sikh violence of 1984. Soon, he is referring to the upheavals of Partition in which a once proud Muslim community was forced to either abandon its homes and flee to the new nation of Pakistan, or to stay on, an impoverished shadow of its former self, while a similar population of Punjabis moved from Pakistan and insinuated themselves into Delhi's new, restless souls.
Taking us further back through the British Raj and Lutyens's extravagant Imperial architecture, Dalrymple immerses himself into his subject. Using some original research from his Scottish connections back home, he recreates the lives of the first British arrivals in Delhi during the late eighteenth century. This part of the book is a search for the author's own roots: one of the early British visitors to Delhi, William Fraser, a Scot from Inverness, was related to Dalrymple's wife Olivia Fraser.
Soon, we are in Mughal times, the author rediscovering long-lost underground passages from Shah Jahan's period that lie underneath the Fraser bungalow which is now the office of the Chief Engineer of the Northern Railways. On touring the building with the help of the Chief Engineer Mr. Prashad, the author speculates that Fraser had demolished the original Mughal palace for his bungalow, but that he had kept the "tykhana", the underground cooling rooms that made Delhi's stifling heat bearable.
Whether the author is visiting an old Yunani medicine man taking the pulse of a patient, a dervish at Nizamuddin Aulia's tomb, or a eunuch living out her strange but touching life in today's Delhi, his tone is down to earth, the questions to his subjects simple. He interviews pirs, professors, Anglo-Indians, scholars of Islamic studies, and one of the last scions of the Mughal dynasty. Their words bring historical events to life.
Traveling backward in time, we go through Muhammad Bin Tughlak's tyrannical sultanate as seen through traveler Ibn Battuta's eyes, the various Sufi mystics, Prithviraj Chauhan, and into the mist of pre-Islamic times. The last few pages hurriedly wrap up the much more scant archaelogical evidence of places mentioned in the Mahabharata. On the morning of the author's departure from Delhi, he leaves us at the Nigambodh Ghat on the Yamuna, the site of the Pandavas' Dasasvamedha Yagna.
The book is lovingly illustrated by Olivia Fraser. There are watercolors (reproduced in black and white) of buildings like Ghiyas-ud-din Tughlak's tomb in Tughlakabad, and also of ordinary people, such as the taxi driver Balvinder Singh standing in front of his Ambassador. Two hand-drawn schematic maps of the new and the old cities locate the main attractions mentioned in the text.
When Dalrymple’s descriptions and research behind each of the city’s buildings, forts, ruins, landmarks and milestones are thoroughly honest and written in a genuinely enjoyable prose, Singh’s “Delhi” on the other hand hops from different eras in the history of Delhi. The prose is humorous, pithy and very satirical in some passages. Whatever the circumstance he describes, the reactionary anti-Sikh violence after the passing of Indira Gandhi, etc is done with finesse and great skill.
Singh maneuvers the novel back and forth in time over a period of 600 years. From the times of Nadir Shah, Taimur and Aurangzeb to that of Edward Lutyens and Mrs Gandhi, the author describes it all either in first or second person. He describes the city’s history in each of these time periods as either a noble man or a ruler or at times even a pitiable soul who later transforms into a celebratory as Mir Taqi (the poet). For the present day description of Delhi, he depicts his own life as an author and his countless affairs with a variety of females that he comes across being himself. Along with his personal narratives he also describes the city of Delhi, its features and landscape and some of the well known streets and localities that we hear of today. The novel ends with the terrorized narrator watching his Sikh neighbours mercilessly burnt alive by people angered due to killing of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh guards.
The two novels “Delhi” by K Singh and “City of Djinns” by W Dalrymple are strikingly similar in terms of their goals as being a historical plunge into the remains and ruins of Delhi, however the two are outstandingly different in their approach. The description by Dalrymple on one hand being an extremely simplistic and an honest attempt at documenting his valued research. Singh’s Delhi on the other hand is vastly explicit in unfolding the deep dark rather “gossip” like facts about the lives of the rulers who ruled Delhi. The two depictions however make a substantial impact on the reader’s minds leaving then drenched into the epilogues as crafted out by the talented authors.
With a noise like a bursting dam, the world slowly dissolved into a great white waterfall”
These last lines from the Dalrymple classic “The City of Djinns” mark an end to the Schottish man’s one year long stay in Delhi along with putting an end to his illustrious novel on the city. William Dalrymple lived in Delhi for four years starting in 1989. Much of his research during that trip is behind "City of Djinns." Although the book is ostensibly about a year's stay of the author and his wife in Delhi, Dalrymple shapes the novel around a historical tour through several layers of the city’s history similar to what Khushwant Singh has attempted to do rather successfully, with his novel “Delhi”.
City of Djinns is based upon an exhaustive city tour that happens over changing weathers, describing the city’s extremities in terms of seasonal and climatic changes.
The book starts off as the couple move into a rental apartment on an old property and meet the landlady (Mrs. Puri, her handicapped husband) along with a gaggle of house servants who water the plants and bring in bed tea, and a taxi driver with attitude named Balvinder Singh.
But the author soon steps back from these little character sketches to reveal his enormous canvas: he talks to several survivors of the anti-Sikh violence of 1984. Soon, he is referring to the upheavals of Partition in which a once proud Muslim community was forced to either abandon its homes and flee to the new nation of Pakistan, or to stay on, an impoverished shadow of its former self, while a similar population of Punjabis moved from Pakistan and insinuated themselves into Delhi's new, restless souls.
Taking us further back through the British Raj and Lutyens's extravagant Imperial architecture, Dalrymple immerses himself into his subject. Using some original research from his Scottish connections back home, he recreates the lives of the first British arrivals in Delhi during the late eighteenth century. This part of the book is a search for the author's own roots: one of the early British visitors to Delhi, William Fraser, a Scot from Inverness, was related to Dalrymple's wife Olivia Fraser.
Soon, we are in Mughal times, the author rediscovering long-lost underground passages from Shah Jahan's period that lie underneath the Fraser bungalow which is now the office of the Chief Engineer of the Northern Railways. On touring the building with the help of the Chief Engineer Mr. Prashad, the author speculates that Fraser had demolished the original Mughal palace for his bungalow, but that he had kept the "tykhana", the underground cooling rooms that made Delhi's stifling heat bearable.
Whether the author is visiting an old Yunani medicine man taking the pulse of a patient, a dervish at Nizamuddin Aulia's tomb, or a eunuch living out her strange but touching life in today's Delhi, his tone is down to earth, the questions to his subjects simple. He interviews pirs, professors, Anglo-Indians, scholars of Islamic studies, and one of the last scions of the Mughal dynasty. Their words bring historical events to life.
Traveling backward in time, we go through Muhammad Bin Tughlak's tyrannical sultanate as seen through traveler Ibn Battuta's eyes, the various Sufi mystics, Prithviraj Chauhan, and into the mist of pre-Islamic times. The last few pages hurriedly wrap up the much more scant archaelogical evidence of places mentioned in the Mahabharata. On the morning of the author's departure from Delhi, he leaves us at the Nigambodh Ghat on the Yamuna, the site of the Pandavas' Dasasvamedha Yagna.
The book is lovingly illustrated by Olivia Fraser. There are watercolors (reproduced in black and white) of buildings like Ghiyas-ud-din Tughlak's tomb in Tughlakabad, and also of ordinary people, such as the taxi driver Balvinder Singh standing in front of his Ambassador. Two hand-drawn schematic maps of the new and the old cities locate the main attractions mentioned in the text.
When Dalrymple’s descriptions and research behind each of the city’s buildings, forts, ruins, landmarks and milestones are thoroughly honest and written in a genuinely enjoyable prose, Singh’s “Delhi” on the other hand hops from different eras in the history of Delhi. The prose is humorous, pithy and very satirical in some passages. Whatever the circumstance he describes, the reactionary anti-Sikh violence after the passing of Indira Gandhi, etc is done with finesse and great skill.
Singh maneuvers the novel back and forth in time over a period of 600 years. From the times of Nadir Shah, Taimur and Aurangzeb to that of Edward Lutyens and Mrs Gandhi, the author describes it all either in first or second person. He describes the city’s history in each of these time periods as either a noble man or a ruler or at times even a pitiable soul who later transforms into a celebratory as Mir Taqi (the poet). For the present day description of Delhi, he depicts his own life as an author and his countless affairs with a variety of females that he comes across being himself. Along with his personal narratives he also describes the city of Delhi, its features and landscape and some of the well known streets and localities that we hear of today. The novel ends with the terrorized narrator watching his Sikh neighbours mercilessly burnt alive by people angered due to killing of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh guards.
The two novels “Delhi” by K Singh and “City of Djinns” by W Dalrymple are strikingly similar in terms of their goals as being a historical plunge into the remains and ruins of Delhi, however the two are outstandingly different in their approach. The description by Dalrymple on one hand being an extremely simplistic and an honest attempt at documenting his valued research. Singh’s Delhi on the other hand is vastly explicit in unfolding the deep dark rather “gossip” like facts about the lives of the rulers who ruled Delhi. The two depictions however make a substantial impact on the reader’s minds leaving then drenched into the epilogues as crafted out by the talented authors.
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