Kipling's India

Rudyard Kipling

Description

Rudyard Kipling: was he a vampire of the Raj or an Indian born in another skin, who upheld the British empire but gave his heart to the East? Khushwant Singh, celebrated columnist, author and ardent Kipling fan, knits this anthology with a fascinating introduction on the life of this controversial writer.

Sujets

• 19th century
• Anthology
• The Jungle Book
• Short Stories
• POEMS
• Fiction
• Rudyard Kipling

Informations

• Publié par: Roli Books
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789351940227
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

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Introduction by Khushwant Singh


Lotus Collection
© Roli Books, 1994 Fourth impression, 2012
The Lotus Collection An imprint of Roli Books Pvt. Ltd. M-75, Greater Kailash II Market, New Delhi 110 048 Phone: ++91 (011) 4068 2000 Fax: ++91 (011) 2921 7185 E-mail: [e-mail] Website: www.rolibooks.com Also at Bangalore, Chennai & Mumbai Cover Design: Bonita Vaz-Shimray
ISBN: 978-81-7436-028-1

CONTENTS
Introduction: Kipling’s Story by Khushwant Singh
STORIES
On the City Wall
Moti Guj – Mutineer
In the Matter of a Private
The Bridge-Builders
Little Tobrah
The Tomb of his Ancestors
The Maltese Cat
The Finances of the Gods
William the Conqueror–Part I
William the Conqueror–Part II
POEMS
The Ballad of East and West
A Song of the English
When Earth’s Last Picture is Painted
The White Man’s Burden
Hymn Before Action
Gunga Din
The Widow at Windsor
Mandalay
Shillin’ a Day
The ’Eathen
The Love Song of Har Dyal
Tommy

‘O nce Thomas Hardy took Kipling to a lovely cottage in the country. While Kipling looked around, Hardy told the genteel elderly owner, ‘I think you would like to know Madam, that the gentleman I have brought to your house is none other than Mr Rudyard Kipling’.
But the good woman did not respond: she’d never heard of Kipling.
A few moments later, when Kipling found himself alone with her, he said, ‘Madam, the gentleman who has brought me here is none other than Thomas Hardy himself. This too fell flat as the lady had not heard of Hardy either!’

Introduction
T he position that Rabindranath Tagore enjoys in Bengali literature, Allama Iqbal in Urdu and Persian, Munshi Premchand in Hindi and Urdu, is enjoyed by Rudyard Kipling among writers and poets who wrote about India. Half a century after his death he remains the most widely read and quoted writer on this land. He also wrote a prodigious number of novels, short stories and poems, more than any other Raj writer. He never tried his hand at writing plays!
India was the background of most of Kipling’s best work. It is hard to believe that he spent a very short part of his life in the country, spoke no Indian language and knew no educated Indians he could talk to with any degree of equality, though his Puran Bhagat (in The Second Jungle Book ) ‘made a speech few Englishmen could have bettered’. He spent the first five years of his life in Bombay where he was born soon after his parents came to live there. He was sent back to England to join school. He returned to India at the age of seventeen, worked and lived in Lahore and Allahabad for about seven years. He travelled extensively across northern India from Rawalpindi to Calcutta and spent his summers with his parents in Simla or with friends in Mussoorie. He never went to the North-West Frontier about which he wrote extensively, while to South India he journeyed only once by train. Thereafter he returned to India just one more time and very briefly. Nevertheless whatever he wrote about India, though heavily biased against the rising Babu class and Brown Sahibs, had the stamp of authenticity, especially when he described the common folk, the flora and fauna. And his descriptions of the Indian countryside during different seasons remains unrivalled to this day – in English.
Before we make an assessment of Kipling’s writings on India it is best to be acquainted with his family background, some details of his life and the men and women who influenced his writing and emotions.
The family derived its name from a small hamlet in Yorkshire. ‘My knowledge of my family is of the sketchiest,’ admitted Kipling to a correspondent. ‘They seem to have included small farmers, bell-founders, clock-makers and the like.’ However modest in origin, many men and women of his family attained eminence in different fields. The Pre-Raphaelite painter Sir Edward Burne-Jones was a cousin once removed. Stanley Baldwin, also a cousin, became prime minister of England. Talent for writing, somewhat diluted, continued in the younger generation. A niece, Angela Thirkell became one of Australia’s leading novelists. Of her two sons by a Canadian husband called Mclnnes, the elder, Graham Mclnnes, was for some years posted with the Canadian high commission in Delhi where he wrote a fictionalized biography of the painter Amrita Shergill. His younger brother, Colin Mclnnes, became very well known in London’s literary circles as a writer and a journalist. Both brothers died in their fifties.
Rudyard Kipling’s father John Lockwood Kipling married into the influential Macdonald family. At their wedding in March 1885 was present the poet Swinburne, the two Rossettis (painter Dante Gabriel and his sister, the poet Christina) and the painter Ford Maddox Brown. It was through his wife Alice’s connections that John Kipling got an offer to be professor of Architectural Sculpture at a new arts school in Bombay, opened by the munificence of a Parsi baronet, Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy. And so the young couple arrived in India. On 30 December 1865 was born their first child, a son they named Rudyard after a small lake where they had first met. Males in the family were usually named John or Joseph and so his full name was Joseph Rudyard Kipling.
The Kiplings lived in a bungalow with a large garden attached to the college. Young Rudyard’s childhood friends were a Hindu bearer, Meeta, and his Goan Catholic ayah. The one took him to the Shiva temple, the ayah took him to the Catholic church. The Kiplings, though Methodists, had no strong views on religion and seldom went to church.
Rudyard was a little more that two years old when he first saw his native England. The family, now with a baby girl named Trix, spent the winter months with their cousins. Rudyard found it cold and unloveable. They returned to Bombay to spend another four years in the city. In later years Rudyard recalled the sight of the Arabian Sea from Mahim at sunset… ‘There were far-going Arabs dhows on the pearly waters, and gaily dressed Parsees wading out to worship the sun... I have always felt the menacing darkness of Tropical eventide, as I have loved the voices of night-wind through palm or banana leaves and the song of the tree-frogs.’
Rudyard Kipling’s first stay in India came to an end when he was only five-and-a-half years old. His parents took him and his sister to England and boarded them with the family of a retired naval officer in Southsea.
Rudyard spent the next five years with this family. They were the unhappiest in his life: the naval officer became ‘Uncle Harry’ and his wife ‘Aunty Rosa’ in his story Black Sheep. ‘I had never heard of Hell, so I was introduced to it in all its terrors,’ he wrote. He regularly received corporal punishment. The one redeeming feature of ‘the calculated torture’ he suffered was that he learnt to tell lies. He admitted, ‘It made me give attention to the lies I found it necessary to tell; and this I presume, is the foundation of literary effort.’ He was rewarded for fibbing when he went to school; they hung a placard between his shoulders reading ‘Liar’. The bitter experience of the years at Southsea made him suspicious of protestations of love. When his mother finally came to get them and tried to kiss him, he cowered in fear, expecting