William Dalrymple’s Nine Lives reveals the ‘extraordinary persistence of faith in a fast-changing India’

From the ‘gleaming hills’ of Sravanabelagola (a Jain pilgrim town in Karnataka) to the ‘eerie burning ghats’ of Tarapith, William Dalrymple has traveled far and wide in search of lives ‘representing a different from of devotion’ in modern India. But today he is in the poolside of a plush five-star hotel of Kolkata, basking in the success of the launch of his latest book, Nine Lives. “You should have been there yesterday, my baul friends performed at the event,” says Dalrymple as he offers me a bowl of crispies.

His baul friends figure prominently in Nine Lives, a book which can be best described as collection of non-fiction stories of nine people. They endear the readers with their bohemian ways and address philosophy through simplistic logic. “You can’t help having a good time with these guys. They are always singing and dancing, smoking ganja and drinking Old Monk. And before you know it they will rustle up some mustard hilsa,” laughs Dalrymple. As if on cue, a waiter arrives with an unusually large menu and asks him to place his lunch order. “Why is it that you don’t have hilsa? There is only betki in the menu,” he chides the waiter good-naturedly.

Since I have spent a good part of my last few hours immersed in the life of Prasannamati Mataji (one of the protagonists of Dalrymple’s Nine Lives) I wonder how a man so content with a glass of beer and a bowl of chips can write compassionately about an ascetic Jain nun? “I admire her isn’t that enough?” he asks.

... contd.