At the Court of the Fish-eyed Goddess Travels in the Indian Subcontinent

At the Court of the Fish-eyed Goddess is the Indian edition of William Dalrymple's The Age of Kali, a collection of essays drawn from nearly a decade of travel across the Indian subcontinent. The title refers to Meenakshi, the fish-eyed goddess of Madurai, whose temple is the subject of one of the chapters; the Western title invokes the Kali Yuga, the Hindu age of decline in which worldly problems intensify.

The essays are reportage rather than devotional travel writing. Dalrymple covers sati and the caste wars of Bihar, political corruption, sectarian violence, and the aftermath of Partition, moving between Patna, Lucknow, Gwalior, Madurai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Goa, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and a chapter set on Réunion. Recurring subjects include the widows of Vrindavan, the Tamil Tigers, the last of Goa's Portuguese-era aristocracy, and the pressures globalization was placing on older ways of life.

Several chapters are built around interviews with public figures — Laloo Prasad Yadav, Vijayaraje Scindia, Imran Khan, and Benazir Bhutto among them. The ordering and selection of essays differ somewhat between the Indian and Western editions.