William Dalrymple: The Age of Kali

In Hindu cosmology, world time is divided into four great epochs called the Yuga Cycle: Satya Yuga, Treta Yuga, Dwapara Yuga, and the Kali Yuga. As the cycle progresses through the four stages, the length of each yuga decreases, but social and moral decay multiplies. We are believed to be in the Kali Yuga, the age of conflict, sin, and disintegration.

This sets the tone for the book, so that a few pages in, I felt relieved that I did not read this before, or during, my trip to India. 

“This book covers so many sensitive areas that it is bound to raise a few cries of protest and dissent, particularly from Indians understandably touchy about criticism from abroad; but it is a work of love. Its subject is an area of the world I revere like no other, and in which I have chosen to spend most of my time since I was free to make that choice,” writes Dalrymple in the introduction. 

But as I read on, I began to regret not reading this before, or during, my trip to India! Unlike the three other Dalrymple books in the Vintage Departures edition, this is less travelogue than a compilation of articles and essays about the Indian subcontinent, from north to south and east to west, which are more political in nature.

Published in 1998, it includes interviews with Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto and Imran Khan, and figures from opposing sides of caste wars and political parties. It is, therefore, a crash course on a part of the world that, despite its significant advances, is still reeling from the British Raj, the Partition, and religious discrimination. As an outsider and common reader, I have yet to encounter a more readable and insightful work that encapsulates caste and gender prejudice, corruption in government, the justice system and the economic obstacles of the subcontinent in a single book. 

Dalrymple rarely waxes poetic here, but this book stamps his authority in the field of journalism. As I read this amidst horrifying world events and the filing of certificates of candidacies by movie stars, social media influencers, and crooks here in the Philippines, I can easily believe that we are, indeed, in the Age of Kali.