Rudyard Kipling's Kim

Sandra on Kim:  While this book is a definite “dude read” I found I enjoyed quite a lot of it.  I have a few qualms with the fact that while Kipling is trying to write an “authentic” Indian novel, there is no denying his definite British Imperial slant to the whole thing. 

Kimball O’Hara, Kim, is the son of an Irish officer but has been raised in the streets of Lahore (now in Pakistan)  as a native Indian.  The story follows Kim’s journey after meeting a holy man to working on the Great Game, a term I came to be familiar with while reading this book and has to do with spies and intrigue.  The story kept my interest throughout and exposed me to a world I knew virtually nothing about.  It contains elements of Indian history, culture and religion filtered through Kipling’s English cheesecloth.    He translates for us the first time he uses an unfamiliar word:  but-parast  (idolater) , so this helps a great deal.  While the cities Kim visits are unfamiliar, his language is strange and his religion is “different” it deals with many universal themes.

The treatment of the poor:  “Enter! Enter!” cried a fat Hindu money-lender, his folded account-book in a cloth under his arm.  With an oily smirk: “It is well to be kind to the poor.”  “Ay, at seven per cent a month with a mortgage on the unborn calf,” said a young Dogra soldier going south on leave; and they all laughed.

On prayer:  “Let the Gods order it.  I have never pestered Them with prayers:  I do not think they will pester me.  Look you, I have noticed in my long life that those who eternally break in upon Those Above with complaints and reports and bellowing and weepings are presently sent for in haste,…I have never wearied the Gods.  They will remember this, and give me a quiet place where I can drive my lance in the shade…”

And most of all:   Kim is in search of himself.  Who is Kim?  What is Kim?  Again, a universal theme that runs through many of the books we have been reading.  Kim becomes the chela (disciple) of a Bhotiya (Tibetan) lama searching for the River of the Arrow which will “wash away all taint and speckle of sin.”  The lama is a thoroughly likeable character and teaches many lessons about being on the Wheel of Things (his euphemism for life) and seeking merit (being a good person).    When Kim would kill a cobra in their path the lama points out the cobra is “upon the Wheel as we are—a life ascending or descending—very far from deliverance” and says Kim should let him live out his life.    When Kim is being trained by the British, the lama asks him to question what sort of sahib he will be, hoping he will not be among the men who “follow desire and come to emptiness.”   He is a really cool old guy.   While I don’t think this was a “great” novel, it was a very good one and I enjoyed the read.  I’d recommend it for you dudes out there and some of you dudettes might like it too.

Ernie:  When I was very young I read The Mad King, a Ruritanian adventure by Edgar Rice Burroughs.  Full of swordplay, gunfights, mistaken identities, romance, narrow escapes and the destiny of a country in the balance, I thought it was a great book.  It is probably just a good book but I still think it is great since it made a big impact on me when I read it. 

Had I read Kim when I was young, I know it would have had a similar impact.  After all, it’s the story about a young man trying to discover his path and ultimately his true identity.  Kim moves effortlessly through many Indian cultures-- Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, but has great difficulties in his own world as a Sahib or white Englishman.  He explores India and as he struggles for his destiny a wealth of people from many walks of life attempt to use him for their own needs.   A perfect story for a young person to read.

I enjoyed Kipling’s writing and appreciated his translations and explanations.  It helped me to have a geographic encyclopedia handy as many of the locations mentioned in Kim have changed names over the past century.

As with some of our other writers, I knew Kipling only through his short stories.  I found Kim to be a good introduction to his novels and look forward to reading more of his work.

Like Sandra, I had some difficulty with reading a ‘Story of India’ written by an Englishman.  Of course, I think I would have the same trouble accepting a story about the lives of Black maids in the 60’s as told by their employers.  Just a thought.

Kim is a very good book, one I wish I had read a long time before now.

Next week:  Ernie reads Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton