I just finished rereading for the nth time the novel Kim (1900) by Rudyard Kipling. I first read it as a pre-teen and enjoyed it then, I’ve reread it since, some years ago. It is in the public domain and is available online for free.
People criticize Kipling because he was an unabashed colonialist, as indeed most Brits were at the time. I read it the last few days with this in mind and have to say I believe Kipling was very fond of India and the Indian people, while regarding neither them nor their Brit colonial masters as saints.
Briefly, it is the story of a pre-teen Irish/English orphan boy growing up on the streets of Bombay (Mumbai) while living with a older Hindu woman who raised him. His widowed father, an enlisted soldier in a British regiment at the time of Kim’s birth, basically drank himself to death after his wife died giving birth to Kim.
Kim joins a Tibetan lama on pilgrimage as his chela and the two have a variety of adventures traveling up and down India. Kim evenually links up with his dad’s old regiment and they send him to sahib school where he learns to be a Brit. Then he is recruited to be a spy for the Brits, and shows some talent at it as he routinely passes as an Indian, with the aid of skin dye.
Is it realistic? Probably not. Is it a fun read? Definitely, and this time I didn’t skip over the descriptive passages as I had as a youngster. There is a world of ethnography hiding in these pages. I believe I’ll try to find a DVD of the film version to see again.
