He befriends an aged Tibetan lama and following the lama on his quest for a sacred river becomes both Kim's raison d'etre and the framework for the plot. He knows Indian culture of the streets through and through and he has some most interesting acquaintances. Kim is a boy whose parents are Irish but they both die when he is young and from his earliest years he is brought up as a native of the poorest caste. As an adult, the political climate of those times became clear to me and was an invaluable help to my history studies in high school and college. At first I read it because it has an exciting plot, a spy novel, in effect very enticing for a kid. (That's been 62 years of reading Kim.) It is, in fact, possibly my favorite novel. ~ I first read this book when I was ten years old and have read it again and again over the years. Kim captures the opulence of India's exotic landscape, overlaid by the uneasy presence of the British Raj. The boy juggles Imperialist life with his spiritual bond to the lama, who searches for redemption from the Wheel of Life. (1900) 'Oh ye who tread the Narrow Way, By Tophet-flare to Judgment Day, Be gentle when the heathen pray, To Buddha at Kamakura!'Ī white youth in India, becomes friends with an old ascetic priest, the lama.
