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    The Eyes of Asia
    The Eyes of Asia
    The Eyes of Asia
    Ebook51 pages51 minutes

    The Eyes of Asia

    By Rudyard Kipling

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    Joseph Rudyard Kipling, born 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936 was an eng short-story writer, poet, and novelist. He wrote tales and poems of British soldiers in India and stories for children. He was born in Bombay, in the Bombay Presidency of British India, and was taken by his family to England when he was five years old. “The Eyes of Asia” consists of four stories that read as letters home from soldiers from India and the North-West Frontier, which take place in 1915 and 1916. “A Retired Gentleman” and “The Fumes of the Heart” are both fictionalised letters written from the perspective of wounded Indian soldiers, a Rajput and a Sikh, to their families. The second is cast as a dictated letter from a Sikh soldier to his brother and has dramatic asides and digressions from the injured soldier punctuating the text. As for the remaining two stories, “The Private Account” is presented as a scene showing an Afghan family reading and responding to a letter from their son on the Western Front, and the final story, “A Trooper of Horse”, takes the form of a letter from an unwounded Muslim soldier in France to his mother. (Excerpt from Wikipedia)
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOtbebookpublishing
    Release dateDec 27, 2015
    ISBN9783956766763
    The Eyes of Asia
    Author

    Rudyard Kipling

    Rudyard Kipling was born in India in 1865. After intermittently moving between India and England during his early life, he settled in the latter in 1889, published his novel The Light That Failed in 1891 and married Caroline (Carrie) Balestier the following year. They returned to her home in Brattleboro, Vermont, where Kipling wrote both The Jungle Book and its sequel, as well as Captains Courageous. He continued to write prolifically and was the first Englishman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907 but his later years were darkened by the death of his son John at the Battle of Loos in 1915. He died in 1936.

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      Book preview

      The Eyes of Asia - Rudyard Kipling

      A RETIRED GENTLEMAN

      From Bishen Singh Saktawut, Subedar Major, 215th Indurgurh [Todd's] Rajputs, now at Lyndhurst, Hampshire, England, this letter is sent to Madhu Singh, Sawant, Risaldar Major [retired] 146th [Dublana] Horse, on his fief which he holds under the Thakore Sahib of Pech at Bukani by the River, near Chiturkaira, Kotah, Rajputana, written in the fifth month of the year 1916, English count.

      Having experienced five months of this war, I became infected with fever and a strong coldness of the stomach [rupture]. The doctor ordered me out of it altogether. They have also cut me with knives for a wound on my leg. It is now healed but the strength is gone, and it is very frightened of the ground. I have been in many hospitals for a long time. At this present I am living in a hospital for Indian troops in a forest-reservation called New, which was established by a King's order in ages past. There is no order for my return to India. I do not desire it. My Regiment has now gone out of France—to Egypt, or Africa. My officer Sahibs are for the most part dead or in hospitals. During a railway journey when two people sit side by side for two hours one feels the absence of the other when he alights. How great then was my anguish at being severed from my Regiment after thirty-three years! Now, however, I am finished. If I return to India I cannot drill the new men between my two crutches. I should subsist in my village on my wound-pension among old and young who have never seen war. Here I have great consideration. Though I am useless they are patient with me.

      Having knowledge of the English tongue, I am sometimes invited to interpret between those in the hospital for the Indian troops and visitors of high position. I advance eminent visitors, such as relatives of Kings and Princes into the presence of the Colonel Doctor Sahib. I enjoy a small room apart from the hospital wards. I have a servant. The Colonel Doctor Sahib examines my body at certain times. I am forbidden to stoop even for my crutches. They are instantly restored to me by orderlies and my friends among the English. I come and go at my pleasure where I will, and my presence is solicited by the honourable.

      You say I made a mistake to join the war at the end of my service? I have endured five months of it. Come you out and endure two and a half. You are three years younger than I. Why do you sit at home and drill new men? Remember:

      The Brahman who steals,

      The widow who wears ornaments,

      The Rajput who avoids the battle,

      Are only fit for crows' meat.

      You write me that this is a war for young men? The old are not entirely useless. The Badshah [the King] himself gave me the medal for fetching in my captain from out of the wires upon my back. That work caused me the coldness in my stomach. Old men should not do coolie-work. Your cavalry were useless in France. Infantry can fight in this war—not cavalry. It is as impossible for us to get out of our trenches and exterminate the enemy as it is for the enemy to attack us. Doubtless the cavalry brigades will show what they are made of in Egypt or Persia. This business in France is all Artillery work and mines. The blowing up of the Chitoree Bastion when Arjoon went to Heaven waving his sword, as the song says, would not be noticed in the noise of this war.

      The nature of the enemy is to go to earth and flood us with artillery of large weight. When we were in the trenches it was a burden. When we rested in the villages we found great ease. As to our food, it was like a bunnia's marriage-feast. Everything given, nothing counted. Some of us—especially among your cavalry—grew so fat that they were compelled to wrestle to keep thin. This is because there was no marching.

      The nature of the enemy is to commit shame upon women and children, and to defile the shrines of his own

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