Maybe…it is only those of us who have no eyes that can see through the lure of maya, and glimpse reality for what it is.
- Kanai, the blind minstrel in Nine Lives, p.246
A few days back, we got William Dalrymple’s well received book Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India from our local library.
The book is a collection of nine essays, each covering one life, i.e. the story of one individual.
Each essay addresses a different subject but two common threads run through the Nine Lives:
* The setting of the subject matter – they’re all located in the small towns and villages or what Dalrymple describes as “the places suspended between modernity and tradition.”
* All the essays look at the impact of the frenetic pace of development and change currently underway in India on the different religious traditions.
In Dalrymple’s own words:
Each life is intended to act as a keyhole into the way that each specific religious vocation has been caught and transformed in the vortex of India’s metamorphosis during this rapid period of transition, while revealing the extraordinary persistence of faith and ritual in a fast-changing landscape.
It’s a strange universe some of the ‘Lives” inhabit, practicing what may seem to the average eye to be bizarre customs and rituals.
If bizarre and odd are what turn you on, read the story of Manisha Ma Bhairavi in the The lady Twilight and follow it up with The Song of the Blind Ministrel. Tantric sadhanas, cremation ground rituals, drinking from human skulls, animal sacrifices, unusual sexual practices et al should certainly give you a high. Continue reading »
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