another great Dalrymple | Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India

Good book | Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India | William Dalrymple

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	• Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India William Dalrymple Knopf, 2010 - 304 pages average customer review:based on 6 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

a wondrous "read" about good people whom most of us will never otherwise hear.

Highly interesting, wonderfully researched, beautifully written, as are all of this author's works.
A main question seems to be whether often-isolated, syncretistic, devotional religious practices will continue in the face of India's burgeoning economy and, presumably, growing secularism and consumerism, on the one hand, and the exclusionary fanaticism of a militant segment of Hindus and Muslims, on the other. While much will be gained by greater educational opportunity and a higher/healthier standard of living for the rural and urban poor and powerless, rich, curious, sometimes bizarre religious practices in the name of the gods will probably fade away.

This book is not about mainstream religious practices or faiths of the great religions --- or even of "smaller traditions" that have gained acceptance, if not understanding, because of their great age. The `Sacred" referred to in the title are approaches to gods/God that are, for all the integrity of those interviewed who practice them, mightily strange.

The book certainly shows that devout, faithful approaches to belief are common to all levels of people and a belief in a "greater power" is sustaining in the most difficult of situations. The book is a wondrous "read" about good people whom most of us will never otherwise hear.

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another great Dalrymple

Brilliant and fascinating. This is the most recent in a collection of splendid travel books - true stories - by William Dalrymple. I own and have read them all.

If you are interested in India, in Indian practices, Indian religion, Indian thought - you MUST read this.

Good book

Elegant and occasionally nostalgic William Dalrymple has written a beautiful and insightful book on the hidden India, a country at once capitalist and modern but also still spiritual and unique. Dalrymple said that the idea for this book was born 16 years ago in 1993 when he was corkscrewing up a Himalayan trail. He does not identify when his interviews took place. It is therefore difficult to envisage when and how India's traditional forms of religious life have been transformed in the vortex of the region's rapid change. I have always liked Dalrymple's books as he has always been fantastic through his well researched writings. Nine Lives isn't just another travel book. It's a window to contemporary India - the one that remains forgotten or hidden, but is very much out there on the road, quite literally. As Dalrymple puts it, "The water moves on, a little faster than before, yet still the great river flows. It is as fluid and unpredictable in its moods as it has ever been, but it meanders within familiar banks."

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Nine Lives- Nine Hundred Loves

I have lived in India. I inhaled the air at higher altitudes in the Himalayas, and wondered if oxygen deprivation causes this deeper awareness and spirituality. But then everything is heavily laden with spirituality up there, every rock, every tree, every drop of water is pregnant with a rich history. I have watched the sadhus walk by on pilgrimages of one sort or another. After a brief glimpse of curiosity at each other, we moved on to our appointed destinies, each regarding the other as irrelevent in the greater scheme of the Universe. But not so for Mr. Dalrymple. He delved deeper. He noted their humbleness as having just as legitimate place as yours or mine in the Universe, and he did it with a wonderful writing style. He flooded me with memories of all the things I missed that he captured so well on the journey. And if you haven't made such journies, you will feel enriched for reading this book and taking the journey through this very competant author's pages.It's almost like being there. Well done, William Dalrymple. You are a truly gifted author.

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Spritual life in India thru personal stories

Extremely well written personal tales of individual's spiritual path and practices that illuminates the larger Indian culture past and present.

From the author of The Last Mughal (?A compulsively readable masterpiece? ?The New York Review of Books), an exquisite, mesmerizing book that illuminates the remarkable ways in which traditional forms of religious life in India have been transformed in the vortex of the region?s rapid change?a book that distills the author?s twenty-five years of travel in India, taking us deep into ways of life that we might otherwise never have known exist.

A Buddhist monk takes up arms to resist the Chinese invasion of Tibet?and spends the rest of his life atoning for the violence by hand printing the finest prayer flags in India . . . A Jain nun tests her powers of detachment as she watches her closest friend ritually starve herself to death . . . A woman leaves her middle-class life in Calcutta and finds unexpected fulfillment living as a Tantric in an isolated, skull-filled cremation ground . . . A prison warder from Kerala is worshipped as an incarnate deity for three months of every year . . . An idol carver, the twenty-third in a long line of sculptors, must reconcile himself to his son?s desire to study computer engineering . . . An illiterate goatherd from Rajasthan keeps alive in his memory an ancient four-thousand-stanza sacred epic . . . A temple prostitute, who initially resisted her own initiation into sex work, pushes both her daughters into a trade she nonetheless regards as a sacred calling.

William Dalrymple chronicles these lives with expansive insight and a spellbinding evocation of circumstance. And while the stories reveal the vigorous resilience of individuals in the face of the relentless onslaught of modernity, they reveal as well the continuity of ancient traditions that endure to this day. A dazzling travelogue of both place and spirit.

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