Free The Age of Kali by William Dalrymple

politics you could have it closed down?’ I suggested.
    ‘Never again,’ said Suleiman. ‘After two terms in the Legislative Assembly I came on record saying I would leave the Congress Party if it continued to patronise criminals. The new breed of Indian politician has no ideas and no principles. In most cases they are just common criminals, in it for what they can plunder. Before he died I went and saw Rajiv and told him what was happening. He was interested but he didn’t do anything. He was a good man, but weak, unsure of himself. He did nothing to stop the rot.’
    ‘Do you really think things are that bad?’ I asked.
    ‘There has been a decline in education, in health, in sanitation. There is a general air of misery and suffering in the air. It’s got much, much worse in the last fifteen years. Last week, a few miles outside Lucknow, robbers stopped the traffic and began robbingpassers-by in broad daylight. Later, it turned out that the bandits were policemen.
    ‘When I first joined the Legislative Assembly I was elected with an unprecedented majority. Perhaps you are right: perhaps I should have stayed in politics. But what I saw just horrified me. These people … In their desire to get a majority, the rules are bent, the laws broken, institutions are destroyed. The effects are there for anyone to see. You saw the roads: they’re intolerable. Twenty years ago the journey here used to take an hour; now it takes twice that. Electricity is now virtually non-existent, or at best very erratic. There is no health care, no education, nothing. Fifty years after Independence there are still villages around here which have no drinking water. And now there are these hold-ups on the road. Because they are up to their neck in it, the police and the politicians turn a blind eye.’
    ‘But isn’t that all the more reason for you to stay in politics?’ I said. ‘If all the people with integrity were to resign, then of course the criminals will take over.’
    ‘Today it is impossible to have integrity or honesty and to stay in politics in India,’ replied Suleiman. ‘The process you have to go through is so ugly, so awful, it cannot leave you untouched. Its nature is such that it corrodes, that it eats up all that is most precious and vital in the spirit. It acts like acid on one’s integrity and sincerity. You quickly find yourself doing something totally immoral, and you ask yourself: “What next?” ’
    We fell silent for a few minutes, watching the sun setting over the sugar mill. Behind us, the bearer reappeared to announce that the Rajah’s
dal
and rice was finally ready. It was now nearly five o’clock.
    ‘In some places in India perhaps you can still achieve some good through politics,’ said Suleiman. ‘But in Lucknow it’s like a black hole. One has an awful feeling that the forces of darkness are going to win here. It gets worse by the year, the month, the week. The criminals feel they can act with impunity: if they’re not actually Members of the Legislative Assembly themselves, they’ll certainlyhave political connections. As long as they split 10 per cent of their takings between the local MLA and the police, they can get on and plunder the country without trouble.
    ‘Everything is beginning to disintegrate,’ said Suleiman, still looking down over the parapet. ‘Everything.’
    He gestured out towards the darkening fields below. Night was drawing in now, and a cold wind was blowing in from the plains: ‘The entire economic and social structure of this area is collapsing,’ he said. ‘It’s like the end of the Moghul Empire. We’re regressing in to a dark age.’

The City of Widows
    VRINDAVAN, UTTAR PRADESH , 1997
    The eye of faith can often see much that is hidden from the vision of the non-believer. To most secular visitors, Vrindavan appears to be nothing more than a rundown north Indian bazaar town, its dusty streets clogged with cows, beggars, bicycles and rickshaws. But to the