Kim (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) - Rudyard Kipling [8]
There are two strata in Kipling’s appreciation of India, the stratum of the child and that of the young man. It was the latter who observed the British in India and wrote the rather cocky and rather acid tales of Delhi and Simla, but it was the former who loved the country and its people.... The Indian characters have the greater reality because they are treated with the understanding of love.... It is the four great Indian characters in Kim who are real: the Lama [not Indian], Mahbub Ali, Hurree Chunder Mookerjee, and the wealthy widow from the North.12
Constantly appealing to the senses, deceptively transparent, and as lucid as the reflection of a lake, Kipling’s rich prose, after more than a hundred years, is still surprisingly fresh and vivid. India springs to life in the bustling activity of men and animals in the crowded Kashmir serai, described in a series of cinematic flashes: “Here were all manner of Northern folk, tending tethered ponies and kneeling camels; loading and unloading bales and bundles; drawing water for the evening meal at the creaking well-windlasses; piling grass before the shrieking, wild-eyed stallions; cuffing the surly caravan dogs; paying off camel-drivers; taking on new grooms; swearing, shouting, arguing, and chaffering in the packed square” (p. 20) . The sun rises on the burning plain in a stunning rainbow of colors: “Golden, rose, saffron, and pink, the morning mists smoked away across the flat green levels. All the rich Punjab lay out in the splendour of the keen sun” (p. 34). The enervating heat, in season, produces a chorus of somnolent sounds: “There was a drowsy buzz of small life in hot sunshine, a cooing of doves, and a sleepy drone of well-wheels across the fields” (p. 56).
The twisty road that rises to the hills of Kipling’s beloved Simla brings relief from the heat as well as the pleasures of its ever-changing flora and fauna, its distant prospects up to the towering mountains and down to the retreating plains:
the wandering road, climbing, dipping, and sweeping about the growing spurs; the flush of the morning laid along the distant snows; the branched cacti, tier upon tier on the stony hillsides; the voices of a thousand water-channels; the chatter of the monkeys; the solemn deodars, climbing one after another with down-drooped branches; the vista of the Plains rolled out far beneath them; the incessant twanging of the tonga-horns and the wild rush of the led horses when a tonga swung round a curve (p. 143).
Finally, night comes, with different temperatures, colors, and smells, and a welcome rest from the labors of the day: “Then the night fell, changing the touch of the air, drawing a low, even haze, like a gossamer veil of blue, across the face of the country and bringing out, keen and distinct, the smell of wood-smoke and catde and the good scent of wheaten cakes cooked on ashes” (p. 65).
In a letter Kipling described Kim as “a long leisurely Asiatic yarn in which there are hardly any Englishmen. It has been a labour of great love and I think it is a bit more temperate and wise than much of my stuff.”13 And in his autobiography he said of the novel: “There was a good deal of beauty in it, and not a little wisdom; the best in both sorts being owed to my Father.”14 There was also a great deal of Kipling’s life in it. His alternating cycles of six years in India, eleven school years in England, and seven years as a journalist in India correspond to the tripartite structure of the novel. In chapters 1 to 5 Kim travels with the lama, delivers Mahbub’s message, and (following the prophecy) finds his father’s regiment. In chapters 6 to 10 he’s formally trained with the regiment, at St. Xavier’s school, and by Hurree and Lurgan. In chapters 11 to 15 he is reunited with the lama, defeats the Russians, and finds his real identity as a