The age of Kali - William Dalrymple

The fourth book from the most acclaimed and gifted young travel writer of his generation, author of the best-selling In Xanadu, City of Djinns and From the Holy Mountain.

William Dalrymple, who wrote so magically about India in City of Djinns, returns to the country in a series of remarkable essays. Featured in the pages of Indian Ink are fifteen-year-old guerrilla girls and dowager Maharanis; flashy Bombay drinks parties and violent village blood feuds; a group of vegetarian terrorists intent on destroying India's first Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet; and a palace where port and cigars are still carried to guests on a miniature silver steam train.
In the course of his travels Dalrymple meets such figures as Imran Khan, Ismail Merchant, Benazir Bhutto and Baba Sehgal, the Indian Gary Glitter; he witnesses the macabre nightly offering to the bloodthirsty goddess Parashakti - She Who is Seated on a Throne of Five Corpses; he experiences civil war in Kashmir and caste massacres in the badlands of Bihar, and dines with a drug baron on the North-West Frontier; he discovers such oddities as the terrorist apes of Jaipur (only brought to book when the municipality began impregnating their bananas with opium); and the shrine where Lord Krishna is said to make love every night to his 16,108 wives and 64,732 milkmaids.