1901: an orphaned Irish boy, growing up on the streets of Lahore, puts
his natural talents to better use.
This is a book that gives the reader a little bit of everything.
It's a coming-of-age novel; it's a travelogue of the people and
customs of British India; it's an adventurous tale of espionage; it's
a parable of the search for enlightenment.
Kim encounters a wandering Tibetan lama, and attaches himself to him
as his disciple, standing guard between this innocent man and the
world that Kim knows all too well. They travel together, and the
Pashtun horse-trader who knows Kim asks him to do him a favour by
delivering a copy of the pedigree of a mare…
In the end there are three great pulls on Kim: the life on the road
with his lama, the pleasure of spycraft, and the pressure to accept
his heritage (proved via an amulet entirely as magical as it ought to
be) and become fully a Sahib. As he considers all of them, the reader
is treated to picaresque incidents through India and into the
Himalayas.
Some accuse Kipling of stereotyping, but I think he's more subtle than
that. Yes, the Babu is every upstart Bengali who came up against the
Raj, made a bid to be taken seriously by it, and failed; but he is
also every smart Bengali who learned to play the role of that
upstart, to put the Sahibs off their guard and bolster their sense of
superiority. The Kulu woman is a chattery old thing, but also the
anchor of her family who chatters because she wants to, and she's
finally in control of her life having spent most of it effectively
being someone else's servant. The British rule of the country is not a
thing to be praised or criticised; it is simply there, and people
must do what they can to live in reality. If one reads the book
itself, rather than what one has been led to expect to find there,
it's all rather less black-and-white than modern critics like to paint
Kipling.
It's not perfect, I suppose; some modern readers may find the pace a
little slow. If you object to words like "Orientals" and "Asiatics",
and a feeling that for the most part they are Not Entirely Like Us,
you will object to this book. But there is also a great love,
sometimes tolerant, usually wholehearted, for India, the land, the
cultures, and the people. Somewhere on a dusty road, I like to think,
there is a boy still wandering with his lama.
Text available from
Project Gutenberg among other
sources.
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