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“The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.”
~St.Augustine

The picaresque novel (from the Spanish “pcaro”, for “rogue” or “rascal”) is a type of prose fiction that depicts in realistic and often humorous detail the adventures of a roguish hero getting by on his or her wits in a dangerous and foreign society. Though this type of novel originated in Spain, there are examples of it in every language. In Kim, Rudyard Kipling takes us on a memorable journey down the Grand Trunk road in India in a fascinating portrait of cultures in collision.

It’s interesting to trace the route one takes to finding a new favorite book. For example, I would never willingly have read anything by Rudyard Kipling, who is lodged in my consciousness as the author of children’s stories (Jungle Books) and hyper-patriotic marching poems that end in phrases like, “And then you’ll be a man, my son.” Great stuff; just not my thing. It took a portrait of Kim in another book to spark my interest enough to overcome my initial prejudice.

Laurie R. King’s brilliant mystery series featuring Sherlock Holmes and his young partner, Mary Russell, crosses the line between fictional and historical characters without hesitation. In The Game, Holmes and Russell are sent to India to find Kimball O’hara, the protagonist of Kim, portrayed in The Game as a historical character. As I read I became fascinated with this son of an Irish soldier and an Indian woman, orphaned at a young age and somehow abandoned in the Indian backcountry, who eventually becomes a spy for the British. So (with a mental shrug) I decided to give Kipling a try, and I bought the book.

And what a book! Rudyard Kipling, raised both in England and India by parents who helped him see across cultural divides, creates in Kim an irresistible combination of Indian pragmatism and British idealism. The road trip begins when 11-year-old Kim attaches himself to a Tibetan lama, on a pilgrimage to find a sacred river that will lead him to enlightenment. Kim is fascinated by this humble old man, who appears to be as detached as he himself is from the social constraints of caste and country. Kim volunteers himself as servant and guide, and the relationship that they forge is one of the sweetest I have found in literature. Much of the narrative involves Kim’s efforts to provide and care for the old man, always with this deep undercurrent of sincere regard and reverent affection. It is here, walking with these two unlikely companions along the dusty streets of some small village,that we can see, and smell, and hear, and taste Kipling’s India:

“And now we have walked a weary way,” said Kim. “Surely we shall soon come to a parao (a resting-place). Shall we stay there? Look, the sun is sloping.”

“Who will receive us this evening?”

“That is all one. This country is full of good folk. Besides,” – he sunk his voice beneath a whisper, – “we have money.”

The crowd thickened as they neared the resting-place which marked the end of their day’s journey. A line of stalls selling very simple food and tobacco, a stack of firewood, a police station, a well, a horse-trough, a few trees, and under them, some trampled ground dotted with the black ashes of old fires, are all that mark a parao on the Grand Trunk; if you except the beggars and the crows – both hungry.” (63)

As a true child of both cultures, Kim’s usefulness to the British government becomes apparent, and he is soon taken away to be educated at the British schools while the lama continues his pilgrimage. These are the less exciting sections of the book; we sigh with relief when Kim sheds his schoolboy garments and escapes to the back roads for every holiday. The lama’s beautiful faith, so different from our Western striving for perfection, consists in the effort to abandon all desire or selfish intent. One may “acquire merit” by doing good to others, but there must be no ego involved, no intention to push or manipulate events. The fundamental differences in the two philosophies become apparent in times of crisis: Kim tries to find something to do, and the lama tries to gain understanding about what is being done to him. For example, when an English priest discovers Kim’s Irish parentage, the lama is told that he must give up the boy to the white “sahibs.” Both Kim and the lama are devastated, but while Kim considers ways to escape, the lama turns inward and rebukes himself for having become attached to the boy:

“Said Kim in English, distressed for the lama’s agony: “I think if you will let me go now we will walk away quietly and not steal. We will look for that River like before I was caught.”

“Good heavens, I don’t know how to console him,” said Father Victor, watching the lama intently. They listened to each other’s breathing – three – five full minutes. Then the lama raised his head, and looked forth across them into space and emptiness.

“And I am a follower of the Way,” he said bitterly. “The sin is mine and the punishment is mine. I made believe to myself – for now I see it was but make-belief – that thou wast sent to me to aid in the Search. So my heart went out to thee for thy charity and thy courtesy and the wisdom of thy little years. But those who follow the way must permit not the fire of any desire or attachment, for that is all illusion.” (91-92)

Poetry and Poetic Prose

Kipling’s poetry appears in bits and snatches at the beginning of each chapter. Much of it reads like the stilted verses I remember, but there was one intriguing stanza from a poem about the Prodigal Son that tempts me to reconsider the poetry as well:

Here come I to my own again –

Fed, forgiven and known again –

Claimed by bone of my bone again,

And sib to flesh of my flesh!

The fatted calf is dressed for me,

But the husks have greater zest for me.

I think my pigs will be best for me,

So I’m off to the styes afresh. (77)

What an insightful glimpse into the mind of the addict, or the wanderer of any kind who, when welcomed home and made comfortable, slides quickly into relapse. These unexpected insights abound in Kim, and take the novel to the level of great fiction. When he’s not concentrating so hard on meter and rhyme, Kipling’s prose is truly poetic and a delight to read. Simple descriptions have a lyrical quality that simply sings, as in the passage where the lama returns to the Himalayas, his beloved “hills:”

“Glancing back at the huge ridges behind him and the faint, thin line of the road whereby they had come, he would lay out, with a hillman’s generous breadth of vision, fresh marches for the morrow; or, halting in the neck of some uplifted pass. would stretch out his hands yearningly towards the high snows of the horizon. In the dawns they flared windy-red above stark blue. All day long they lay like molten silver under the sun, and at evening put on their jewels again.

---

” (230)

Morten Cohen sums up the magical element in Kim,

“In a sense, Kim’s quest is everyone’s: the quest for identity, the quest for selfhood. It is a universal theme. And, in the end, the quest is more important than the discovery. The quest involves reaching out, searching, and by reaching out and searching, the boy is shaped into the man. There is more meaning in trial than there is in triumph. The knowable, the definable, is dross; the real worth of life is entangled in the unknowable, the magical, the mystical.” (Kim, Bantam Classic Edition, Introduction, xv)