“We’re all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding.” – Rudyard Kipling

The half-Indian opium in India fascinates Kim, a youngster who was raised as an orphan by a British soldier and also goes by the name Kimball O’Hara. While playing freely on the streets of Lahore as a boy, he becomes an acquaintance with a British secret service agent. Later, he teams up with a Tibetan lama and becomes Kim’s student in an effort to escape the cycle of life. However, while riding with the lama along the Grand Trunk Road, the British make use of Kim to deliver messages to the British commander. This is Kim and the Lama’s action-packed adventure in their exciting debut book.

Book Excerpt

Kim clicked round the self-registering turnstile; the old man followed and
halted amazed. In the entrance-hall stood the larger figures of the Greco-
Buddhist sculptures done, savants know how long since, by forgotten workmen
whose hands were feeling, and not unskilfully, for the mysteriously transmitted
Grecian touch. There were hundreds of pieces, friezes of figures in relief,
fragments of statues and slabs crowded with figures that had encrusted the brick
walls of the Buddhist stupas and viharas of the North Country and now, dug up
and labelled, made the pride of the Museum. In open-mouthed wonder the lama
turned to this and that, and finally checked in rapt attention before a large altorelief representing a coronation or apotheosis of the Lord Buddha. The Master
was represented seated on a lotus the petals of which were so deeply undercut as
to show almost detached. Round Him was an adoring hierarchy of kings, elders,
and old-time Buddhas. Below were lotus-covered waters with fishes and waterbirds. Two butterfly-winged dewas held a wreath over His head; above them
another pair supported an umbrella surmounted by the jewelled headdress of the
Bodhisat.

Kim

By – Rudyard Kipling

• PUBLISHED: 1901
• PAGES: 296