BOOK 8#

Title – ‘City of Djinns’

Publisher, Year, Place- Bloomsbury, 1993, New Delhi

Grades- 8^th and above

Pages- 339

Genre- Travelogue

Theme – Travel/ History

Author - William Dalrymple

Brief Biography

William Dalrymple is a renowned author and historian. Some of his well-known works are 'The Last Mughal', 'The White Mughals', and 'The Anarchy'. He has been the recipient of several awards like Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, Scottish Book of the Year Prize, the Wolfson Prize for History etc.

His books are a delight to read not only because of the remarkable way he writes, but the depth of research you would find in them.

Synopsis

The 'City of Djinns' is tale of our beloved city Delhi. The book traces the Cultural journey of different parts of our city over the centuries. It includes experiences of people who were part of a culture that has slowly faded over the last two decades.

Even if you are someone born and brought in Delhi,  this book would offer you new memories of a past long forgotten.

 

Reading - Writing Strategies

This book is one of the finest examples of a travel book.  You can use this to introduce travel writing into your classroom.

Pre- reading

You can begin by introducing the idea of travel writing and busting certain myths around it. As living in the times of instagram travel bloggers, travel writing appears like a piece of cake. But it’s actually one of the most complicated pieces of genre.

A travel book is a vessel into which a wonderfully varied cocktail of ingredients can be poured, including politics, History, Philosophy, Art etc and other genres like biography, Anthropology, Fiction and Non-Fiction.

A temporary step by step process for travel writing could be –

• Deciding on the place, on which you wish to write about.
• Deciding on what you want to write about , would it be more of your journey and experience or the place you are visiting.
• Doing a prior research on the place. You can use various resources – such as internet archives, books already written and even people who know about the place.
• To remember being very descriptive in your accounts about the place, for e.g. – you decide to visit a specific a monument. Describe its architecture, what struck you about it, if something has changed etc.
• In case of the 'City of Dijnns', testimonies of people provided a lot of valuable information and insight. So you can think about people who you can talk to prior, during or after visiting the place.
• You have to decide on the way you would record these testimonies/ your experience of being in the place - through notes, writing in a journal, using a recorder etc.
• You need to think about the questions you could ask.

During reading

You can ask the student to focus of the structure of the novel-

• Whose voice do you here?
• The way the author has arranged the testimonies of people. Especially the richness of research and variety of experiences you find in the book.
• The way the writing flows throughout the book

 

Post reading

Following the steps described prior to reading, ask the students to pick a place of their own.

And give them the following worksheet-

Description of the place- what did you see? What did you hear? What did you smell?

People you met and talked to – About them- their name, what were they doing in the place? what information did they give you?

Your own experience of visiting the place- How did you feel? Were you reminded of old memories? Was the experience whatever you expected it to be?

Write your own travelogue using the above information.

 

 

Reflection

The ‘City of Djinns’ is one fantastic read. Its easy readability is one of the reasons I like it so much. It paints a very vivid picture of Delhi, as city that has been rebuilt again and again over centuries

The first time I read it, I was surprised by the pieces of information that were absolutely new to me.Being someone who has spent their entire life living in this place, I sure thought I knew everything about it.  But this book gave me new insights about the past and present cultures of my own home.

Its a bit lengthy, but the gripping content would capture your attention and you wont even realise when the book is over.