KIM III -- chapter 2.1: De-Plane! De-Plane! :: Te-Rain! Te-Rain!

Kim and the Lama

STOP READING HERE: "The last of the Great Ones," said the Sikh with authority, "was Sikander Julkarn (Alexander the Great). He paved the streets of Jullundur and built a great tank near Umballa. That pavement holds to this day; and the tank is there also. I never heard of thy God."

1. Evaluate the racism of India as it appears in the book.  Is there racism about Kipling himself, Kim, or simply the culture in general.  If not Kipling, since the narrative is essentially described through Kim's eyes, does Kipling, do you believe, possess any of that racism?
2. Cool pun: "I know the ways of the train" :: "I know the ways of the te-rain/terrain."
3. By continuation of the number 1, what happens on the train--at least the night trains--that can never happen elsewhere?  Judging by the so-public display between Husband and Wife, is there more "freedom" (for my lack of a better word) here than elsewhere?  Notice which individuals (as much as I can tell by my limited understanding of India back then (or now, for that matter)) don't care about caste and which do.
4. "Are we Rajahs to throw away good silver when the world is so charitable?"
5. Check Google Earth if you get a chance for the relative locations of Lahore (in Pakistan) to Umballah (Ambala, modern spelling) to Benares (or Banaras, official called Varanasi).
6. There is a crazy amount of folklore throughout the world built around rivers, and, more often than not, their healing effects, from La Llarona to Naaman and Styx to the Ganges (also called, as it is in Kim, the Gunga), not to mention the general Buddhist comparison (if I'm not mistaken, which is always a possibility, unfortunately) between the flow of life and the flow of a river.  Also, there's an obvious visual correlation between the path of an arrow as compared to that of a river.  Thoughts about this general confluence?
7. "He began in Urdu the tale of the Lord Buddha, but, borne by his own thoughts, slid into Tibetan and long-droned texts from a Chinese book of the Buddha's life. The gentle, tolerant folk looked on reverently. All India is full of holy men stammering gospels in strange tongues."  Tolerant, nonplussed, or numbly indifferent?