Recently, I read William Dalrymple’s Age of Kali, and one particular section caught my attention.

The railways are now so much part of the everyday life of the subcontinent that it is difficult today to take in the revolution they brought about, or the degree to which they both created and destroyed the India of the Raj. Before the arrival of the railways in 1850, travel in India meant months of struggle over primitive dirt roads. Just fifty years later, tracks had been laid from the beaches south of Madras to the Afghan border, more than twenty-three thousand miles of railway in all. It was the biggest, and most costly, construction project undertaken by any colonial power in any colony anywhere in the world. It was also the largest single investment of British capital in the whole of the nineteenth century.

This was a fascinating read.

The book is a series of short essays in which Dalrymple shares his experience as he travels across India as a journalist. Sort of like a Behind-The-Scenes of journalism. The underlying theme of all the essays points towards society’s decadence.

Having been a child of the ’90s and reading this book in 2020 was like looking at a snapshot of life back then and allowing me cognizance of the language and symbols referenced in the book. Furthermore, taking the book as a reference and looking at the present, one can undoubtedly see “the age of Kali” all around us.

Malcolm was a man of his time, shaped by the society he lived in. What is most remarkable about him is his eagerness to evolve himself. When in prison, he read everything he could lay his hand on developing his beliefs and philosophies. After prison, he spent the next 12 years in dedicating his life to the Nation of Islam, towards transforming the lives of his Afro-American brothers using the philosophy of Elijah Muhammad, as it had once transformed him. During this time, he fought and blamed all Whites for the current condition of the Black community. When he finally broke away from the Nation of Islam and traveled the world, he soon came to see beyond racial lines and then became a staunch human rights activist.

In a world plagued with misinformation, alternate facts, and whitewashed histories, William Dalrymple has done a fantastic job presenting a much needed nuanced picture of history/politics in the 18th century India. Today, the colonization of India is either glorified as a blessing or spoken as evil, depending on whom one talks to, while the Mughal rule is looked upon as evil. In this book, Dalrymple presents a nuanced history of the time, showing the politics that were played out, eventually giving rise to the British colonial project in India.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind/ by Yuval Noah Harari, aims to “..explore[s] the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be ‘human.’” A rather ambitious goal to fit in less than 500 pages.

The Last Mughal by William Dalrymple, an excellent piece of research into the time that, in many ways gave birth to the nationalist movement in India. The book recreates the one of the largest mutinies of the modern word, the 1857 uprising. Starting from the events that led to the uprising, the book covers in detail, both sides of the story. Using both European as well as Indian sources, translating the mutiny papers for almost the first time.

Nineteen eighty-four by George Orwell, written in 1949, must be one of those books that come closest to prophecy. Asimov’s stories are very subtle in connection with present day events though as mentioned earlier, they do have a question we must ask ourselves while looking at the progress of science and technology. This on the other hand was more direct.

The book talks of a world where every aspect of human life is under supervision and is controlled in the direction the government( referred to as the party) wants it to be. The book gives detail working of how the party operates so as to achieve its motives.

My last read was “The picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde.

The book takes you through the life of Dorian, a handsome youth who wishes never to grow old. This particular wish of his comes true, his soul resides in one of his portraits, So the portrait grows old while he remains young forever. A very interesting character in the book, is Lord Henry. A person with a completely different approach to life, and an out of the ordinary philosophy.(which can be debated,extensively) his influence on Dorian that makes Dorian live a narcissistic life filled with selfish deeds-without thinking defining them as good or bad ,keeping his youth as a shield for all his deeds.