Children of Kali [Paperback]

In this intricate, meandering and totally entertaining travelogue, the English journalist Kevin Rushby gives us a taste of criminality in modern India. Correctly starting from as far back as the English Raj's recognition and fight against the Thugs, he draws on memories of childhood readings, historical research, legends, modern fiction and present day interviews with criminals and policemen to paint a wide scenery of what criminality has matured to in the deeply ethical India.
The book starts as a literary historical research into the Thug cult (ritual killers that strangled strangers with a silken scarf in honour of the goddess Kali), that became so fascinating for all the lovers of adventures from the 1830's to 1952 (when John Master's "The Deceivers" was written). For those out there that identify in this kind of literature remember "Gunga Din" (1937), Eugene Sue's Feringhea in the "Wandering Jew", "The Confession of a Thug" by Meadow's Taylor (famous literary success of 1839, still in press). To find information in India, our Author starts from Bollywood interviewing actors and writers of gangster movies and moves on to the search for Veerappan, India's most famous bandit, turned separatist on the Tamil Nadu-Karnata border. Here he doesn't manage to meet the outlaw but speaks with people that have been kidnapped and gains many hints on the evolution of banditry into political interest in the Tamil separatist movement. Our hero then travels north in what once was the most Thug infested area (Madhya Pradesh). Here he visits the vestiges of Sleeman's (the great eliminator of the Thug cult) memory that have been amazingly well preserved. He visits Hyderabad, Nagpur, crosses the Namada Rivers, always describing the beautiful peaceful life of rural India and the monuments of the past. Among the many encounters he meets a fascinating girl he calls Mandy, that seems to act like a puzzling inspiration for our traveller to open his mind to new and different outlooks on the country and its culture. At one point he reaches almost the conclusion that the definition of a Thug cult might have been one of the many examples of Orientalism (E. Said, the preconceived idea of attributing defects to the East) tainted by a preconception of inherited criminality (Lombroso docet). The quest continues to Sagar (where most of the Thugs were executed), then to the Chambal Ravines and Jalaun until a fried sets up an interview with a gangster turned into a social worker, that really embodies the connection between politics and criminality. From the world of Sleeman Rushby passes to that of Kali, their goddess, visiting the Sangam, the holy confluence of the Ganges, Jamuna and Sarawasti rivers. Here he sees the temple of Brindachul with its man-monkeys and reflects of the sense of the goddess who actually represents among other human necessities that of a superior justice, a power over right and wrong, the mystical yearnings and violence of the dispossessed. Varanasi is the next step, where Rushby spends his time looking at sadhus and ghats and gives us insight into India's ancient Brahmin culture. Swimming the Ganga at dawn leaves its sign and then our hero goes to Kolkata (Kali's city) were he will meet a gang of Bengali drug dealers protected by a holy man they forage with hemp. The temple experience with the goad sacrifices is very strong and Kevin finally seems to identify with the bloodshed ritual and find an end to his search o criminality and evil. Atonement after sacrifice is just around the corner.
The description of the criminal phenomena in a foreign country is not easy, indeed it is a feat. However the intermingling of good and bad, past and present, sacred and profane, is typical of old countries. No marvel then, Mafia in Italy is just the same and we live in 2007, so Rushby's conscience of flow writing and apparently far fetched quest serve as a frame for describing modern day India's reality.
A very nice book for curious, literate readers.

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