The Age of Kali

by William Dalrymple

  ‘I myself have seen him in a dream,’ said Mohammed Ibrahim. ‘I was asleep in this garden when I had the dream. Shaheed Bhutto was sitting in a big chair in the company of the Prophet.’

  ‘God is specially with this family,’ said the second gardener. ‘That we can say with certainty.’

  ‘So do you believe that in due course Benazir may also become a saint?’ I asked.

  The three retainers looked at each other uncertainly.

  ‘There are not so many female saints in our Islam,’ said one gardener.

  ‘Well, what about Murtaza then?’

  ‘I believe he too will reach this peak,’ said Mohammed Ibrahim. ‘He is the true heir of Shaheed Bhutto. We all pray that he too will be a great saint one day.’

  Postscript

  Two and a half years later, in September 1996, Murtaza Bhutto and six of his supporters were shot dead in a hail of police bullets, a few yards from the front door of 70 Clifton. The police claimed it was an accident, but when the officer in charge of the shooting was found hanged a few days later, officially having taken his own life, the circumstances began to look more and more suspicious. Benazir denied any complicity in the killing and made an operatic display of public mourning, but when her government was dissolved by the President on 5 November 1996 for gross corruption, her husband was immediately charged in connection with the murder and is currently imprisoned in Karachi, awaiting trial. There seems, however, to be little hard evidence against him, and there is a strong possibility that he will again succeed in avoiding conviction.

  After her husband’s death, Ghinwa Bhutto and her stepdaughter Fatima took over Murtaza’s PPP-Shaheed Bhutto faction, using it to launch a vigorous campaign against Benazir. Partly as a result of their efforts, and partly due to increasing evidence of the massive scale of Benazir and Zardari’s corruption, with more and more details emerging of a succession of lavish foreign properties and Swiss bank accounts containing hundreds of millions of dollars, in the general election which followed in February 1997, Nawaz Sharif’s Muslim League won by a record margin. At the time of writing Sharif remains in the saddle, though Pakistan is being consumed by ever-worsening sectarian violence and is undergoing a major economic crisis, made much worse by the sanctions imposed after the country detonated its nuclear bomb in May 1998.

  Discredited as she is, Benazir remains leader of the opposition. Her children have been sent to Dubai ‘for their own safety’. It seems highly unlikely that Benazir can mount a credible comeback – although stranger things have happened in Pakistan – and it is now said to be open to question whether she even wants to do so: some of her friends believe that all she desires is to get Zardari out of jail, and then to leave the country. In this case, the move of her children to Dubai may be the precursor to her own departure. On the other hand, Benazir’s almost messianic sense of her own destiny may preclude her from ever totally giving up politics, however strong the evidence of corruption against her.

  One last serendipity: in 1997, as chance would have it, Christopher Lee was cast to play Jinnah in a forthcoming biopic of the Quaid-e-Azam’s life. I was clearly not alone in noticing the uncanny resemblance between Dracula’s most memorable incarnation and the man who must take much of the blame for the bloodbath of Partition.

  GLOSSARY

  angurka long frock-coat

  arti ceremonial waving of a lamp before an effigy of a god as an offering of light during a puja

  ashram place of religious retreat; hermitage

  babu clerk or bureaucrat (lit. ‘educated gentleman’)

  bania money-lender or shopkeeper; a Hindu of the merchant caste

  baradari tribe, clan, community, sub-caste or brotherhood, esp. in Pakistan

  begum aristocratic Muslim woman

  bhajan Hindu devotional song

  bibi ghar eighteenth-century expression meaning the separate quarters occupied by a European’s Indian wife or mistress

  biryani fancy rice dish often including chunks of lamb; a speciality of Hyderabad

  bungi oik

  chador Muslim woman’s veil (lit. ‘sheet’). Can be anything from a headscarf to something approaching a fully-fledged sack

  chai tea

  chaikhana tea stall

  charpoy rope-strung bed on which the population of rural India spend much of their lives (lit. ‘four feet’)

  chattri domed Moghul kiosk supported on pillars, often used as a decorative feature to top turrets and minarets (lit. ‘umbrella’)

  choli bodice

  chowk bazaar

  chowkidar guard, gatekeeper

  cirque volcanic crater

  crore ten million (or one hundred lakh)

  dacoit outlaw; member of a robber gang

  dal lentil dish; eaten with rice or chappattis it is an Indian staple

  Dalits lit. ‘the oppressed’. The base of the caste pyramids formerly known as ‘Untouchables’

  darshan sight, view, esp. of an idol in a temple or a Moghul Emperor

  dhoti traditional loin-wrap of Hindu males

  diwan a collection of Persian or Urdu poems; also the head of finance of chief minister in an Indian princely state

  dupatta over-the-shoulder scarf worn with a salwar kameez

  durbar formal reception

  durree rug or carpet

  gajra marigold garland

  ghat steps leading to a bathing place or river

  ghazal North Indian Urdu or Persian love lyric

  ghee clarified butter

  godown warehouse

  goonda hired thug

  gopi milkmaid (in the Krishna myth)

  gopura ceremonial South Indian temple gateway, usually pyramidical in shape

  gupshup gossip

  Harijan lit. ‘child of God’. Untouchable

  haveli courtyard house

  henna tropical shrub whose leaves are used as a red dye. Much in demand in the North-West Frontier for dying the beards of Pathan tribesmen

  holi the Hindu spring festival; normally celebrated by the throwing of coloured water and the consumption of a great deal of hashish and opium

  hookah waterpipe or hubble bubble

  idli sambhar South Indian staple consisting of rice cakes and curried vegetables

  imambara pillared hall in which Shia Muslims gather at the festival of Muharram to hear religious discourses and readings relating to the death of the two grandsons of the prophet, Hussain and Hasan. The imambara reached its finest architectural expression in Lucknow

  jati community or clan, members of which are of the same caste or subcaste

  Kali Yug the age of Kali; the epoch of darkness and disintegration

  karma fate, destiny

  khadi homespun cloth, particularly associated with followers of Gandhi

  khana food, a meal

  khawa green tea, esp. in Kashmir or northern territories of Pakistan

  kirtan lit. ‘singing the praises of God’, usually in a devotional gathering

  Kshatriya warrior caste

  kumar member of the untouchable potter caste

  kumkum red powder emblematic of the sexual power of goddesses

  ladoo North Indian milk sweet

  lathi bamboo staff, normally used by police and chowkidars

  lingam the phallic symbol associated with Lord Shiva in his role as Divine Creator

  lungi sarong-style loin-wrap; simplification of the dhoti

  mahout elephant driver

  maidan park or common in the centre of an Indian town or city

  malik Muslim landowner of substance; the head of a Pathan tribe

  mandala circle or circular diagram; symbolic depiction of, and instruction about, the way to enlightenment

  masala dosa South Indian vegetarian staple

  mehfil evening of courtly Moghul entertainment, normally including dancing, the recitation of poetry and the singing of ghazals

  mofussil provincial small town

  moksha enlightenment


  mona Sikh who has cut his hair and removed his beard

  murshad sorcerer, holy man

  mushaira poetic symposium; Moghul literary evening

  naan bread cooked in a tandoor

  nagashwaram outsized Tamil oboe

  namaskar Hindu words of greeting (lit. ‘I bow to thee’)

  naqqar khana drum house; the entrance gateway to a North Indian palace

  nautch Kathak-derived dance performance, executed by professional nautch girls, usually courtesans, esp. in eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries

  nichla oik

  nirvana enlightenment; state of spiritual revelation

  paan Indian delicacy and digestive. It consists of a folded leaf containing (among other things) betel nut, a mild stimulant

  palki palanquin

  panch lit. ‘five’. An abbreviation for sarpanch, the chairman or leader of a panchayat

  panchayat council of village or caste elders, in theory (but not necessarily in practice) consisting of five members

  parikrama pilgrimage circuit

  pir Muslim holy man or Sufi saint

  prasad the portion of consecrated offering (usually food or small white sweets) returned to the worshipper at a Hindu temple

  puja religious devotions (lit. ‘adoration’)

  pukka good, proper, correct

  pullao rice

  pundit Brahmin (lit. ‘learned man’)

  qalander holy fool

  qila fort

  rath chariot, esp. in Hindu temple festivals

  roti bread

  sadhu Hindu holy man

  salwar kameez long tunic and matching loose trousers favoured mainly by girls in North India and by both sexes in Pakistan and Afghanistan

  sardar nobleman, chief or commander. A term of respect

  sarpanch village headman; the chairman or leader of a panchayat

  sathin informal village social worker (lit. ‘friend’)

  sati the old Hindu practice of widow-burning, now illegal (lit. ‘good woman’)

  sepoy Indian foot-soldier, esp. in the service of the East India Company

  shaheed Muslim martyr

  shastra ancient Hindu treatises

  shenai North Indian wind instrument of the oboe family

  sherwani long frock-coat

  shikar hunting

  shish mahal mirror chamber, esp. in palaces

  tabla pair of small Indian hand-drums used as accompaniment in Hindustani music

  ta’wiz Sufi charm

  tawwaif courtesan

  teppam float

  thug strangler; a devotee of Kali who appeases his deity by strangling travellers with a noose (lit. ‘impostor’, ‘cheat’, ‘deceiver’)

  tilak the sacred mark on the centre of a Hindu forehead

  tirtha crossing place or ford; hence a sacred place where one can cross from the world of men to the world of the gods

  vibhuti the white ash-powder smeared on the body of Shiva; hence also his devotees among the sadhus

  yadav caste of North Indian yeoman farmers and cowherds; although low-caste they are politically very powerful in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar

  yakshi evil spirit

  zamindar feudal landowner

  zenana seraglio, harem (lit. ‘relating to women’)

  zindabad lit. ‘Long live!’ Popular slogan in the presence of politicians

  ALSO BY WILLIAM DALRYMPLE

  FROM THE HOLY MOUNTAIN

  A rich, story-filled travelogue chronicling Dalrymple’s journey across the entire Byzantine world, retracing the footsteps of two monks who made the same trip in the spring of A.D. 587. When John Moschos and his pupil Sophronius the Sophist traveled from the shores of the Bosphorus to the sand dunes of Egypt, they stayed in caves, monasteries, and remote hermitages, collecting the wisdom of the stylites and the desert fathers before their fragile world finally shattered under the great eruption of Islam. Using Moschos’s writings as his guide, Dalrymple recreates that epic journey, and his account of his travels is an elegy to the slowly dying civilization of Eastern Christianity and the people that have kept its flame alive.

  Travel

  NINE LIVES

  In Search of the Sacred in Modern India

  In portraits of people we might otherwise never know William Dalrymple distills his twenty-five years of travel in India to explore the challenges faced by practitioners of traditional forms of faith in contemporary India. For two months a year, a man in Kerala divides his time between jobs as a prison warden, a well-builder, and his calling as an incarnate deity. A temple prostitute watches her two daughters die from AIDS after entering a trade she regards as a sacred calling. A Jain nun recalls the pain of watching her closest friend ritually starve herself to death. Together, these tales reveal the resilience of individuals in the face of the relentless onslaught of modernity, the enduring legacy of tradition, and the hope and honor that can be found even in the most unlikely places.

  Religion

  VINTAGE DEPARTURES

  Available wherever books are sold.

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