Sunday, December 7, 2008

Dalrymple on Bombay

Theodore Dalrymple reflects on the Bombay massacre and his own experiences in that most memorable of cities. Here he explains his love for India, a love that I share, but could never hope to express as well as he does (a common hazard in reading Dalrymple) :
It had been a strange morning, to say the least, of the kind that could happen only in India. I have loved the country ever since I first went there as a student aged 19, and think I would be perfectly happy to live there, though I recognise that what attracts me about it repels others. For me, it is the most profoundly human place on earth, the glory and desolation of human existence being constantly before one there in a way that is matched nowhere else.
Precisely.

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