I do not
consider myself a materialistic person. My only bodily
ornamentations are a wedding ring and watch. My home is simply
furnished, and organized for practicality. And my car is a
Volkswagen Passat sedan, as average as might be. And yet when
traveling, I want to see the most striking places in the world. I
want to visit the best treasures of humanity’s past and see what
the highest of culture has on offer. I can’t afford a five-star
hotel, but I enjoy seeing how kings of old lived, their castles and
thrones, and their fates, as dramatic or ordinary as they may be. I
love being at places like Chichen Itza or Angkor Wat and imagining
what life might have been like, their exoticism off the charts. That
is my only explanation for wanting to read William Dalrymple and
Anita Anand’s Kohinoor: The History of the World’s Most
Infamous Diamond (2016), as otherwise, I couldn’t give a damn.
History is
parsed in different ways. From biographies to the evolution of
countries or cultures, details of particular conflicts to people
interviews, we learn about the past along different lines. With its
biographical elements, rises and falls of empires, and numerous
waypoints between, Dalrymple’s Kohinoor is a jagged line, a
criss-crossing of more standard lines of history, and comes across
quite engaging for it. Given the diamond spent the majority of its
life in the Middle East and India in times far more uncertain and
turbulent than now, not to mention opulent and grandiose, its history
is filled with intrigue and excitement. For want of a better term,
its history would fit snugly in the tabloids of Shah Jahan or the
Persian courts.
Like the film
Twenty Bucks, Kohinoor tracks an object as it bounces
around in society, from discovery to present-day whereabouts. In the
great diamond’s case, this is a path filled with tragedy, murder,
royalty, lavishness, assassination, theft, and a great deal else on
its way to its current resting place. The pyramids have stood for
thousands of years as nobody is able to put one in their pocket and
walk away with one. Not so with the Kohinoor. It’s been in many
pockets, from kings to paupers, and inspired many a legend in the
process. Quite literally, books like Wilkie Collins’ Moonstone
and films like Indiana Jones are rooted in the mysticism and lore
surrounding the infamous nature of the Kohinoor.
For scholars and
enthusiasts steeped in Middle Eastern and Hindu history, Kohinoor
will offer little new; Dalrymple skims the surface of many ‘great’
events over centuries of time, the book written from the diamond’s
perspective. For those who know little, it will be an exciting,
daring journey. The history of the Middle East and Hindustan in the
time of the Kohinoor is the stuff of legend. Regardless who reads
it, however, the diamond’s story links cultures, societies, and
continents in a way that very few other things can, and for that will
be of interest whether the reader cares about precious stones or not.
But perhaps the
most interesting aspect of Kohinoor is the question it
indirectly asks: what’s next? Almost certain to outlive myself and
the people reading this post, where is the diamond’s next stop in
time? Will some clever thief create a new pocket for it to reside
in? Will it be destroyed in war? Will it become a political gesture
and returned it to the Middle East, and if so, under what
circumstances? And as the book proves, there are other
possibilities. Overall a minor lesson in Daoism, the undulating line
the diamond cuts through history teaches us the perennial nature of
humanity, and the impermanence of material things.
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