Rudyard Kipling reprise

I realised a couple of days ago that theres another Kipling link - Beautiful Bundi. I visited for a few magical days between the traveller hellhole of Pushkar - full of arseholes attempting to outtraveller each other while sitting around navel gazing and the earthy charms of Kota and Chittorgarh. I suspect that Bundi would by now have been firmly established on the traveller trail so I don't think I'll be revisiting - but rather enjoying my memories of this quiet little rest stop, its castle perched precipitately on the side of a mountain and the blue town spread below that Kipling described as "such a palace as men build for themselves in uneasy dreams, the work of goblins rather than of men" of a cycle ride out in blistering heat to the Jait Sagar lake where Kipling stayed and of the Krishna tea shop after being accosted by a stentorian "Attention!" It takes something to excel in the chai department on the sub-continent but that particular establishment certainly did. I remember the hordes of minkeys being chased of by a caretaker and the astonishing engineering of the towns step wells. Reading back through my journal it seems that I was going through the worse of Yaz withdrawl - lying awake in the beautiful Haveli I was staying in, tears running down my face. And here we are 4 years later and barely in touch. How times change...hopefully in the right direction, I think in my case very much so although Yaz is still closeted. I also rememebr the lovely home cooking a coule of houses down which was a bit of a traveller hang-out chowing down with a tableful of new friends. Hopefully M and Iare in good shape and thinking of our next grip which will hopefully take in a taste of Bulgaria before revisiting Istanbul - this time in hopefully rather more seasonable weather. I think that the idea of staying inland from Malaga is prettyy much stymied. I have to say that its not a destination that really fills me with excitement. Ma and Pa also raised the possibility of a trip to Libya which is high on my list of dream destinations...but with Maries probable career change and also the prospect of moving in together we'll have to see...

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

Spotted on our last trip to London tucked behind Charing Cross station just by Villiers Street which gets a visit from us fairly regularly as theres a South African foods store just round the corner featuring all the familiar names from M's time in South Africa. Kipling was born in Bombay and I think as an Anglo-Indian has the clarity of vision that only tends to come with the eyes of an outsider.He returned to England after a stint in America in 1889. He wrote "meantime, I had found me quarters in Villiers Street, Strand, which forty-six years ago was primitive and passionate in its habits and population. My rooms were small, not over-clean or well-kept, but from my desk I could look out of my window through the fanlight of Gatti's Music-Hall entrance, across the street, almost on to the stage. The Charing Cross trains rumbled through my dreams on one side, the boom of the Strand on the other, while, before my windows, Father Thames under the Shot Tower walked up and down with his traffic"

Coincidentally Kipling's name has come up a couple of times of late firstly because I'm reading Billy Bragg's The Progressive Patriot - Our Bill was brought up with Kipling and also because he recently got a whole issue of Mike Carey and Peter Gross' The Unwritten. He carries baggage does our Rudyard in this post-imperial age. He was a contentious figure even during his lifetime, Orwell called him "a phophet of British imperialism" whether he was that or rather as Billy believes him to be more of a chronicaller of the Raj is a guess a matter of opinion, he was a great writer, maybe not in the modern sense but as a tale-teller and I think that thats what both the Braggmeister and Mike Carey have picked up on. And he does have a way with words, that I think is beyond doubt. He also shifted position fairly radically especially after the death of his son, John at the battle of Loos in 1915. He wrote My So Jack afterwards containing the klines "If any question why we died / Tell them because our fathers lied" which I think speaks volumes about the guilt that he felt about his earlier unquestioning support for the war. To my mind he was quite simply a man of his times, the sentiments expressed in poems like The White Mans burden
Take up the white man's burden
Send forth the best ye breed
Go, bind your your sons to exile
To serve the captives need;
To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild
Your new-caught sullen peoples
Half devil and half child
were utterly unremarkable for the time. Personally I'll go with "what knows he of England / who only England knows.

Strangely I don't think I've ever read any of his work. Dad raised me on tales of derring-do from the Likes of H.Rider Haggard, John Buchan and Captain W.E. Johns but not Kipling.