I think I have mentioned Rudyard Kipling’s magnum
opus, the novel Kim, more than once
before on this blog. It remains, in my opinion as well as that of millions of
other Kipling devotees, the finest and most adoring description of India as she
used to be in the early years of the twentieth century, as it traces the travels
and travails of the young Irish-Indian orphan boy Kimball O’Hara across the
length and breadth of northern India accompanying his chance-found guru Teshoo
Lama, and also getting deeply involved in the Great Game of espionage and
counter-espionage against the Russians who pose a grave (supposed-) threat to
Britain’s Indian empire. It comes to a conclusion when the old lama is convinced
that he has found enlightenment. One closes the book with a profound sigh, slowly
comes out of a trance, and wishes the story had continued forever. And one
keeps going back to it.
Now Stephen Alter has dared to write a sequel to Kim
with the title of The Greatest Game (‘being
the further adventures of Kimball O’Hara’). The year is 1947, and the story
opens in Lahore in March, as India is hurtling towards the ecstasy of
Independence cum devastation of Partition, and events are unfolding as rapidly
as a river approaching a great waterfall. Kim, who is in his own words, ‘60 or
61’ (he doesn’t care to keep careful track of the years), grizzled and somewhat
the worse for wear but still very much engaged with life in the raw, the same
life of the chameleon-like street smart and near destitute vagrant that he has
always known and loved despite his moments of regret and self-pity, narrowly
avoids being murdered and gets drawn into one final adventure: to detect and
derail a plot to assassinate some of the top Congress leaders including Nehru,
which might quite possibly derail the complex and delicate process of the
transfer of power and throw the sub-continent into unimaginable turmoil. To say
more about the plot would be to give it away, but here’s a teaser: some Nazi sympathizers
in high places are involved. Of course Kim gets the better of the baddies and
his private revenge, a couple of medals from the Viceroy himself, as well as a
wad of money that will take him wherever he wants to go (but definitely not a
fortune with which he can comfortably retire). He vanishes from the scene after
one last nostalgic recollection of Zam-zammah, the great bronze cannon that for
long adorned the entrance to the Lahore Ajaib
ghar (museum), where Kipling began the story.
Oh, I nearly forgot: one of the finest touches in
Alter’s story is that the shadowy head of the Imperial Secret Service went under
the pseudonym Ulysses, and he had personally designated the motto of the
Service as ‘To strive, to seek, to find,
and not to yield’. Educated readers will not need a note on that: for
everyone else there is Google.
The book ends
with some beautiful lines which I am tempted to quote: ‘Now that the Angrez have
gone and India has split apart, another chapter will be written in a language
all its own. At times like this, I am convinced that I understood the world
better when I was a child, rather than as an old man with tangled memories and
tortured dreams.’
I intend no disrespect when I say that it is impossible
to quite match Kipling’s level of storytelling magic, as Mr. Alter would probably
be the first to agree, but I must say that he has done a splendid job of almost
catching up. I was especially charmed by two things in this book. One, the way
Kim keeps harking back to old memories from his early youth, including his
brushes with harsh saver-of-souls missionaries, his stint at St. Xavier’s
Lucknow, his mentors including Mahbub Ali the Pathan horse trader from across
the border, Creighton sahib and Lurgan sahib who taught him his intricate trade,
and the way he accidentally recovered the old lama’s brass begging bowl, a
treasure to him indeed. Second, his involvement with two women: Champa, his
middle-aged sort of sweetheart who ran a kotha
in Lahore, whom he brought safely to Delhi just after the great killings
had begun, and his final escapade in tandem with old Anastasia, who had been a
close comrade and colleague in years past, who lives in Simla, still harbours a
great zest for life despite her creaking joints, and who is now a widowed ranee in retirement. For the rest, my
lips are sealed. Read the book; it’s very well worth the expense. Thank you,
Stephen Alter – I am going to read some more of your books soon. And thank you Aveek, for lending me the book.
[The Greatest Game, by Stephen Alter, 2025. Aleph Book Company, pp. 243, Rs. 799 hardcover]
