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Chander is the only tailor in his colony. Though talented, he doesn't like to work hard. He is very lazy. He thinks that one fine day his fortune will shine and he will be a king. His friend Pyare and cloth seller FTV try to convince him to do hard work, but in vain. In this process Chander Tailor meets a fortune-teller who informs that he has "Rajyog" written in his hand. Provided he'll have to marry a "Padmini jati" girl. Additionally that girl should also have a mole on her right lap. Chander is very happy to hear that. He thinks that the time has come for him to become the King. Just marry a girl with mole on thighs. He runs happily. But there's a problem. Pyare and FTV help Chander in remembering Janardhan Bhai. The colony has a saviour in form of Janardhan Bhai. If anyone tries to misbehave with the girls in the colony, he chops off their arms. But for time being he is in the prison. But Janrdhan Bhai has left Jeeva to take care of the colony. But FTV is a old time friend of Jeeva. So FTV manages to bribe Jeeva and carry on the mole searching work smoothly. Chander, Pyare and FTV start searching for the girl with mole. They target a yoga teacher, a widowed doctor and an unmarried girl with poverty. Chander tries out various ways to get close to them and searches for the mole. He stitches beautiful clothes for them and promises to marry each of them. But hell breaks on him when he discovers that there's no mole on any of the three girls laps.HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. '"I am Kim. I am Kim. And what is Kim?" His soul repeated it again and again.' Set against the backdrop of Britain and Russia's political struggle in central Asia, Kim, the son of a drunken Irish soldier grows up as a street-wise orphan in the city of Lahore. Upon befriending an aged Tibetan Lama, the playful and spirited Kim journeys with him across India, experiencing the exotic culture, religion and people of the subcontinent. On their travels they come across Kim's father's old army regiment. The Colone! l quickly spots Kim's ability to blend into his surroundings and trains him to become a spy for the British Army. As his adventures take him further into the world of secret agents and political intrigue, Kim is torn between his spiritual self and the expectations of his British compatriots. In this exotic tale of mystery, friendship and struggle, Kipling gives a fascinating insight into the British Raj and the volatile age of Imperialism in India.One of the particular pleasures of reading
Kim is the full range of emotion, knowledge, and experience that Rudyard Kipling gives his complex hero. Kim O'Hara, the orphaned son of an Irish soldier stationed in India, is neither innocent nor victimized. Raised by an opium-addicted half-caste woman since his equally dissolute father's death, the boy has grown up in the streets of Lahore:
Though he was burned black as any native; though he spoke the vernacular by preference, and his mother-tongue in a c! lipped uncertain sing-song; though he consorted on terms of p! erfect e quality with the small boys of the bazar; Kim was white--a poor white of the very poorest.
From his father and the woman who raised him, Kim has come to believe that a great destiny awaits him. The details, however, are a bit fuzzy, consisting as they do of the woman's addled prophecies of "'a great Red Bull on a green field, and the Colonel riding on his tall horse, yes, and'--dropping into English--'nine hundred devils.'"
In the meantime, Kim amuses himself with intrigues, executing "commissions by night on the crowded housetops for sleek and shiny young men of fashion." His peculiar heritage as a white child gone native, combined with his "love of the game for its own sake," makes him uniquely suited for a bigger game. And when, at last, the long-awaited colonel comes along, Kim is recruited as a spy in Britain's struggle to maintain its colonial grip on India. Kipling was, first and foremost, a man of his time; born and raised in India ! in the 19th century, he was a fervid supporter of the Raj. Nevertheless, his portrait of India and its people is remarkably sympathetic. Yes, there is the stereotypical Westernized Indian Babu Huree Chander with his atrocious English, but there is also Kim's friend and mentor, the Afghani horse trader Mahub Ali, and the gentle Tibetan lama with whom Kim travels along the Grand Trunk Road. The humanity of his characters consistently belies Kipling's private prejudices, and raises Kim above the mere ripping good yarn to the level of a timeless classic. --Alix Wilber
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