Man from the wilderness
Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay in 1865. His birth had been celebrated with the sacrifice of a goat in a thanksgiving ceremony at a temple devoted to Lord Shiva. Childhood in Bombay was paradise. Sadly, this paradise ended when at the age of about five-and-a-half years Ruddy was taken to England for schooling.
At the age of 16-and-a-half, after finishing school, young Kipling arrived in Lahore and joined the Civil & Military Gazette as Assistant Editor in October 1882. Kipling threw himself, his body and soul into this job, working 10 to 15 hours a day. Kipling's six-and-a-half or seven years' hard stint in India defined his three-in-one personality as a story writer, poet, and a patriot.
His novel Naulakha, co-authored with Wolcott Balestier, is astonishingly naked in the opening pages where protagonist Nicholas Tarvin warns his lady love Kate Sherrif against her proposed passage to India. ‘You are not going to throw away your life on this Indian scheme … The land isn't fit for rats; it's the Bad Lands ... It's no place for white men, let alone for white women...'
Kipling's magnum opus, Kim, is a much softer, intriguing and subtle fare. Kim and the Buddhist Lama, the two roadies on their travels through India, are the heart and soul of the saga. 1857– the year of the Indian Mutiny or India's first war of Independence, was in the Lama's words a ‘Black Year.' His poems are awash with an even more intense ideology – 'East is East and West is West, And never shall the twain meet', or 'The White Man's Burden' and 'Mandalay' – are all apiece. With Kipling, the East-west separation is perennial; occasional equality is nominal, never real. His political persona is unmistakeably that of a patriot. My country, right or wrong – and anti-liberal to boot. His criticism of Liberal Viceroy Lord Ripon, an appointee of Prime Minister Gladstone, is well documented in his verse and prose. So was his opposition to the birth of the Indian National Congress that he dismissed it as a putli nautch or puppet dance. This deep-rooted streak continued well into his later years with cold, considered gestures like his tribute to Brigadiergeneral Reginald Dyer of the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre.
His Jungle Book collection of stories for children that was also turned into a blockbuster film is unsullied by politics – for which he continues to be remembered by children forever and after. The Mowgli stories about an Indian wolf-boy or man-cub are the stuff of fancy for young children anywhere and everywhere. The Jungle Book has virtually become the saving grace of Rudyard Kipling, the Nobel Prize winner. Walt Disney's transformation of his Jungle Book has immortalised Kipling as a children's story writer. Scripting a memorable life journey, for children, adults and himself,
Kipling's literature will enthuse generations to come.