I have always been a lover of history and like to read books covering the history of a certain city from the beginning. City of Djinns is certainly what happens when you have the combination of a great historic city and a traveler whose love of the city is equally matched by his prowess of writing.

WD takes us on a journey through time where we look at Delhi and uncover it layer by layer, period through period. What's amazing is that he mixes these journeys with daily, near-mundane life recordings of the Delhi where he lives. His landlady, the taxi driver, and the Persian doctor, all become integral parts of the story and represent a certain era of Delhi.

I think what works in his favor in small part is how he's telling the story, not as a matter of fact or objectively. He's equally surprised to learn new details as we are and it shows.

We start with the Delhi in which he was living, the 1990s. He immediately pointed out the uniqueness. That the city as old as time had a population who wasn't even born there.

He also pointed out the discourse of new modern Punjabi occupants and the old surviving Urdu class. He wasn't shy to touch the uncomfortable topics either. WD spends a good time discussing the 1984 Sikh riots and how it caused a blot and was a terrifying 3 days where neighbors wanted the blood of the Sikhs for the assassination of Indira Gandhi. Here you start to feel that Delhi, for its grandeur and history is going to have some pretty uncomfortable stories as well.

We then move to Partition. The new Punjabi modern populace that WD talks about and interacts with on a daily basis are from modern-day Pakistan who had to escape the massacre and found refuge here. He also talks about how each survivor of the Partition had a story of their own and even the most sober-looking person would have a story worthy of a book on their own.

The surviving Urdu populace, and even the one who emigrated, as WD recounted when he met them in Karachi, longed for a Delhi that ceased to exist in '47. It felt that they were having trouble moving and especially for the ones living in Old Delhi, their favorite city was becoming just a memory in front of their eyes.

WD then takes us to the British times and to do that, he met Iris Portal, a lady whose father worked for the Raj and was a friend to WD's grandmother. She told the story of a Delhi that just become the capital after Calcutta and was at the time littered with monuments all over the place. She also told the story of Edward Lutyens, the architect of New Delhi, after which the author goes through a rabbit hole to find out more about the man. It was here that he realized that the Raj's main aim through these new buildings was deliberately built as an expression of the unconquerable might of the Raj. He painted a complex picture of Lutyens, someone who wasn't about the usual joke and humor, but also someone who was attracted to fascist tendencies and thought the straightforwardness of the Raj and the Indian civil services was much better than the democracy in London. WD also mentioned that for someone who was successful in fusing Eastern and Western styles and aesthetics better than anyone, he vehemently disliked Indian art. But for all its flaws, both WD and I agree that it is the finest architectural artifact created by the Empire.

From here we peel another layer to look at probably the gloomiest period of Delhi. The Twilight is the period from 1739 (invasion by Nadir Shah) to 1857 (First War of Independence and the subsequent massacres.) and by the end, Delhi was barely hanging by a thread. A miracle that it even survived.

Here we are introduced to the ancestors of WD's wife, who were some of the first EIC officers to serve in Delhi. The city was something unrecognizable at this time, it was like a never-ending party for the nobles who wanted nothing to do with administration and work. And it showed, the city showed the signs, not of a fallen warrior, but a drunk addict down on luck.

William Fraser was someone I had really grown to like over time, and his near eccentric behavior somehow felt at home in Delhi. It's also kind of comfortable knowing that at least for a decade after the Battle of Delhi, 1803, Delhi was blessed with Scottish EIC residents who respected and adopted the culture rather than the supremacist beliefs we'll see in a decade. It was entertaining to see just how much they had adopted the Delhi way of living, down to using the tay-khana as the author mentions. However, everything comes to an end. Over time, the early residents and Delhi lovers were replaced by the uptight officers we all know and hate. Fraser, the last to go, was assassinated over a land feud and the chapter was closed by the mutiny and revolt organized by the Indian soldiers and how it was brutally crushed. The massacres afterward broke my heart, and like rubbing salt over a wound, the British erected a monument congratulating themselves for "defeating the enemies", glad that the plaque has been modified to show the full picture now.

I was also intrigued by the placing of Anglo Indians in colonial society. They were, for being mixed blood, ostracised, made fun of, and discriminated against. I genuinely feel bad for them, They don't feel completely Indian due to their family heritage and culture and they are not completely British, because, well, they never even went to England for starters. The story of James Skinner was amazingly interesting to me as well, a mercenary who fought for and against everyone, only for his children to be thrown out of his friend's house is something you expect to see in movies. James Skinner never got the recognition he deserved in Britain because of his mixed blood and he'll probably never get one in India because of his colonial actions. Which is a shame because his one true legacy still lives on. The regiment he raised from a band of irregular cavalry of soldiers still lives on as the 1st Horse of the Armoured Corps of the Indian Army with a proud history, bearing his name, "Skinner's Horse".

Then WD takes us on a detour to meet the eunuchs, the hijras, and how they've been put in a weird limbo due to the clashing cultures of Hindus and Muslims. He befriended a few eunuchs and actually shone a light on their much-covered and murky life. It was both a heartwarming and a heartbreaking chapter. But what got me the most was their genuine optimism and honesty.

We then moved to Shah Jehan's court. And I was honestly surprised at how much of a Ptolemaic influence there was on the Mughals. You had brutal, ruthless murders by relatives, extreme cunningness to down someone else, and near grotesque relationships of incestuous nature. And similarly, like the Ptolemies, the Mughals focused more on parties and luxuries than anything else. The gentleman's code of the Mirza Nama was some of the most superficial things I had ever read. I honestly didn't know Aurangzeb could be more diabolical than I had previously known, The things the book mentions, I don't wanna repeat but Oh My God! I'm also surprised at how close we were to a completely alternate history if Dara Shukho had become Emperor. Would he be more accepting of Hindus? Would others, say the Marathas see their chance and usurp the Mughals? What about after him, would the British still have won the battle of Delhi in 1803? Would Nadir Shah have invaded seeing a weak empire? These were some of the questions I just pondered over while reading.

It's also a testament to WD's Writing skills that he's able to portray that Delhi still carries the tradition long, long after those who started and mastered it have gone. He tells about bird fights, pigeons, khalifas, and weddings that feel like they never ended. It's heartwarming to see, that no tradition truly dies in Delhi. Someone will always keep it alive, even if the place that it originated from has long abandoned it. We see it again with Unani practices of medicines that started with Greece but still have a considerable following in Delhi and, of course, the Sufi mystics.

We now arrive at the time of the Delhi Sultanate. Mohammad bin Tughlaq, was at the best of times, an eccentric psychopath. I'm genuinely surprised he reigned as long as he did. His version of Delhi was unlike the ones of the Mughals with their splendid beauty and near symmetry. His was a more militaristic fortress prepared to take on the all-too-powerful Mongols in the north and the revolting Hindus in the South.

We also have the source of Ibn Battuta, the world's first Karen, who tells us that at least in the Muslim world, Delhi was considered a border town, a sort of outskirts despite its insane and amazing riches. He also tells us that Tughlaq had no qualms about shedding blood and in fact found new and ingenious ways of killing people. It's also interesting to note that while Mughal Delhi, at its prime, was an impenetrable city and thus needed no defenses and could afford to spend on aesthetics, the Delhi of the Sultanate was almost always close to some kind of a conflict and thus was essentially a barrack city with all the militaristic features one can dream. However, his project of moving the capital to Daulatabad was one of the weirdest decisions I've come across in history and the attempts of the citizens to recreate their loved city of Delhi through mosques and walls were so moving and captivating. As WD says, "an exercise of nostalgia".

I also didn't know that Hauz Khas was actually a place for learned scholars, teachers, and savants escaping persecution from their homelands during this time. It was actually amazing to read this.

I've always been fascinated by the Sufi mystics and it was fun to learn more about WD's expeditions to Nizamuddin Dargah. Nizamuddin has sort of become the patron saint of Delhi and it's heartwarming that while tourists go do touristy things in the tombs and forts made by the emperors, the traveler and those who really care to continue to maintain a sort of beautiful lively atmosphere at his Dargah.

I also was not aware of Khwaja Khizr and it was fun to see the origins of a myth through its different incarnations and how a Khizr in Daulatabad and Delhi came from Egypt and the Middle East, who came from the Bible, who came from the Epic of Gilgamesh, the first recorded written text in history! And again, the tradition survives, as seen when WD and Dr. Jaffrey went to see the Khizr's home near Lal Kot.

Also, is it just me, or is it weird for everyone that the passion projects of two of Delhi's most brutal rulers, Aurangzeb and Mohommad bin Tughlaq, lie some 1200 km from the city in Aurangabad (bibi ka maqbara) and Daulatabad (his capital).

We've now come to the final, yet most difficult layer. The history of pre-Islamic Delhi is notoriously empty. There's a good gap of 2000 years between 1000 BC and 1000 AD where no one knows what happened. I personally spent way more time on the internet than I should have trying to find something.

But the Mahabharata came to help here, WD met the famous archaeologist BB Lal to understand the historicity of Indraprastha and how true it was. The earliest recorded written text of the great epic comes from the 4th century AD but with the help of archaeology, PGW artifacts, and looking at the findings of the Purana Qila, the Mahabharata and Kurukshetra war is dated to sometime around 1000 BC.

As for Indraprastha, it existed but was not as splendid as mentioned in the great epic. Which was a shock for both me and WD. What about all the spoils of treasure, the great buildings? Turns out, PGW culture was basically a rural, pastoral economy. What we read was the material culture described of the 4th century AD(the time it was written), not of the 9th century BC. A bummer, but still a great ending nonetheless.

That's it, we've gone back to the beginning. It was a genuinely exhilarating exercise of understanding and knowing the different cultures that existed and coexisted and how the traditions and knowledge still survive, to this day.

The book ends with WD looking for the temple where the first flood came giving the Vedas to Brahma and finds that the tradition was carried on by Sadhus. The story still lived, as with all other things of Delhi.