The Oldie May issue 413

Page 92

Getting Dressed

Our passage to India

DAFYDD JONES

Writer William Dalrymple and artist Olivia Fraser love Indian clothes brigid keenan Shortly after William Dalrymple posted the opening chapter of his first book to the publisher, he found a curt message on his answering machine. ‘I am assuming this is a first draft,’ it said. ‘If not, we will have to seriously reconsider your advance.’ Dalrymple, 24 at the time, began again. In Xanadu was published in 1989, winning plaudits – as all his ten books since have done. Olivia Fraser, his girlfriend, then also 24, decided to put a cosy and secure future at risk. She abandoned her scholarship to Chelsea Art School to join him in the great adventure of making a new life in India. Today her mystical paintings, using Indian miniature-painting techniques on a large scale, hang in galleries around the world. Their Indian venture started badly. The day Fraser arrived in Delhi, ‘excited and terrified’, Dalrymple (who had gone ahead to find somewhere for them to live) developed viral fever and a temperature of 1040F. Turkish Airlines had sent her luggage to Istanbul, there was nothing to eat in the fridge and she was too scared to try street food. A lustful landlord meant that, for their first ten years in India, they pretended to be married. ‘This worked well but it made it a bit embarrassing with friends when we really did get married ten years later,’ grins Fraser. They survived the landlord, bailiffs and swarms of attacking bees (‘I have never run so fast in my life’) and had three children. Thirty-three years later, Delhi is still home. ‘I have always assumed I will die in India,’ Dalrymple laughs. Fraser is not so sure: ‘Mmm … I have my eye on a lovely graveyard in the Highlands.’ Their lifelong love affair with the subcontinent is not surprising – both have Scottish forebears who made their mark in the country. Fraser’s kinsman James Baillie Fraser commissioned the famous Fraser Album of Company School paintings. ‘The vastness of India has given me so much,’ says Dalrymple. ‘It has made me a traveller, historian, photographer, 92 The Oldie May 2022

Left: William’s cotton kurta pyjamas, waistcoat and shawl from Afghanistan; sandals from Greece. Olivia’s layered skirts and top from Anokhi; Dr Martens boots. Below: in 1989 in the Lodi Gardens, Delhi, where they later got engaged

appreciator of art, feature-writer, curator … everything. I love the people, the food, the climate, the lifestyle and all the different cultures mingling together.’ Fraser agrees: ‘You can never be bored in India. It is endlessly stimulating, and endlessly challenging in a crazy way – the electricity goes off, the traffic can be appalling. You need immense patience.’ Both agree that India’s pollution and politics are worrying, and that the climate is changing. ‘Our well water ran out earlier last year and we had to order tankers.’ Both Dalrymple and Fraser are happiest in Indian clothes. Fraser buys all her hand-printed skirts and tops at Anokhi shops in India, and layers them according to the weather. Dalrymple’s favourite tunics and trousers were originally made by a tailor in Peshawar and are copied in Delhi – ‘Bespoke kurta pyjamas for the fuller figure,’ laughs Fraser. When the weather gets chilly, he adds a waistcoat and woollen shawl.

After being locked down in England, they are relieved to be back doing daily yoga classes with their teacher in their Delhi garden. In London, lack of space meant they had do them, one by one, with the teacher on a mobile phone. Dalrymple is writing his next book, The Golden Road, out next year. His photographs and Fraser’s paintings were on view in London last year. Dalrymple continues his work for the Jaipur Literature Festival. His 1997 book, From the Holy Mountain, is to become a film. And The Anarchy, his 2019 history of the East India Company, is being made into a TV series. Fraser is preparing a major exhibition at the Sundaram Tagore Gallery in New York next year. She is back painting in their house on the edge of Delhi. ‘My art brain works better there, and I have all my bits and pieces around me. I like to work with the light, starting at nine and stopping at six, at dusk – what they call cow-dust time in India.’


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Articles inside

Getting Dressed: William Dalrymple and Olivia

5min
pages 92-97

Ask Virginia Ironside

5min
pages 98-100

Crossword

3min
pages 89-90

Taking a Walk: Blean Woods

3min
pages 87-88

Overlooked Britain: Park Lane’s Animals in War

6min
pages 82-84

How the British made the

6min
pages 80-81

On the Road: Maurice Gran

4min
pages 85-86

Bird of the Month: Common

2min
page 79

Exhibitions Huon Mallalieu

2min
pages 69-70

Drink Bill Knott

4min
page 73

Golden Oldies Rachel Johnson

4min
page 68

Television Frances Wilson

4min
page 66

Music Richard Osborne

3min
page 67

Film: Downton Abbey

3min
page 64

History David Horspool

4min
pages 61-62

Bad Relations, by Cressida

5min
pages 59-60

Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK, by Simon Kuper

4min
page 56

Circus of Dreams Adventures in the 1980s Literary World, by John

4min
pages 57-58

English Gardening Eccentrics by Todd Longstaffe-Gowan

4min
pages 54-55

The Palace Papers, by Tina

6min
pages 48-50

Elizabeth of York: The Last White Rose, by Alison Weir

5min
page 53

Small World Jem Clarke

4min
page 47

Readers’ Letters

8min
pages 44-45

Country Mouse Giles Wood

4min
page 37

The Doctor’s Surgery

3min
page 43

Postcards from the Edge

4min
pages 38-40

Town Mouse

3min
page 36

Media Matters Stephen Glover

4min
page 35

Never too old for netball

4min
pages 32-34

The genius behind Casablanca Nick Brown

6min
pages 30-31

The first child star, William

4min
page 29

How to buy a picture

6min
pages 26-28

My two dads Allegra Huston

6min
pages 22-23

Branston, king of pickles

4min
pages 24-25

The Old Un’s Notes

9min
pages 5-8

Are You Being Served? turns 50 Roger Lewis

7min
pages 14-15

The joy of dropping out

3min
page 21

1950s school segregation

4min
page 11

Long live oldie Luddites

4min
pages 16-17

Gyles Brandreth’s Diary

4min
page 9

Grumpy Oldie Man

4min
page 10

The Bomber Harris recipe

7min
pages 18-20
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