Reviewed by Edith LaGraziana
A Boy and a Red Lama
on the Diamond Way
In fact, Kim is
a gripping adventure and spy novel surrounding the orphaned Irishboy
Kimball O'Hara who is thirteen years old when his story begins in the
streets of Lahore, India. Rudyard Kipling set the boy’s almost savage
existence against a colourful and vibrant backdrop of India around 1900
that includes many details of daily life, customs, society, politics and
not least religion that children or less informed adults may not fully
grasp nor be interested in. Even Kim only understands part of what is
going on. He is too young and he never knew the life of a European
Sahib, but grew up like any Indian boy in the poor neighbourhood. He
never learnt to write nor to read. Moreover, he speaks the local
languages better than English. Kim is a clever boy, though, with many
friends and perfectly able to look after himself, when
“… there shuffled round the corner, from the roaring Motee Bazar, such a man as Kim, who thought he knew all castes, had never seen. He was nearly six feet high, dressed in fold upon fold of dingy stuff like horse-blanketing, and not one fold of it could Kim refer to any known trade or profession. At his belt hung a long open-work iron pencase and a wooden rosary such as holy men wear. On his head was a gigantic sort of tam-o'-shanter. His face was yellow and wrinkled, like that of Fook Shing, the Chinese bootmaker in the bazar. His eyes turned up at the corners and looked like little slits of onyx.”
As it turns out, the man is an old Red
Lama from Tibet called Teshoo on a pilgrimage to find Buddha’s legendary
“River of the Arrow” that frees from the “Wheel of Things”. Out of
curiosity and because Kim feels that the old man will need help to get
along in a country full of crooks, he joins him as his disciple. At the
same time Kim thinks that wandering about with the lama will give him
the opportunity to look out for the great Red Bull on a green field that
– as his late father always told him – would come for him with the
Colonel riding on his tall horse and nine hundred devils. To raise money
for the travel Kim accepts to secretly take a letter to an Englishman
in Umballa for his Punjabi friend, the horse-dealer Mahbub Ali, and thus
first gets involved in espionage in colonial India where local powers
still try to shake off British rule and regain sovereignty. Before long,
both Teshoo Lama as well as a British officer in charge of recruiting
spies see to it that Kim gets some formal education and he becomes a St
Xavier's boy in Partibus at Lucknow for nearly three years. Then he
resumes his wanderings with Teshoo Lama to be initiated as a spy
afterwards, but he is pushed into the trade much sooner than expected…
All things considered, I enjoyed reading Kim
very much. It’s true that from today’s point of view the novel must be
called a children’s book rather than adult fiction, and yet, it offers
such a vivid and detailed picture of Indian cultures and religions that
it amazed me. In addition, it is a testimonial of Indian history from
the point of view of an Englishman whose great intelligence and
exceedingly sound education show through every line.
Nota bene:
Since Rudyard Kipling has been dead for a long time, thus it goes without saying that his works are in the public domain and can legally be downloaded for free from sites like Project Gutenberg and ManyBooks.net just for instance. An expertly made-up free edition of Kim is available on Feedbooks.
Since Rudyard Kipling has been dead for a long time, thus it goes without saying that his works are in the public domain and can legally be downloaded for free from sites like Project Gutenberg and ManyBooks.net just for instance. An expertly made-up free edition of Kim is available on Feedbooks.
Original post on Lagraziana's Kalliopeion:
No comments
Post a Comment