ABSTRACT
‘Ram Bux’, a common Hindu name, was used as a generic appellation. The Sporting Times of London carried a few later poems by ‘Ram Bux’ in 1896; these include ‘Tommy’s Farewell to Lizer’, a companion piece to ‘Tommy’s Farewell to India’. The poems dealing with Indian affairs are consistent in their tone and attitude. ‘Sati in 1887’ frames the first-person narrator as a British civil servant, exasperated at the dilatory ways of the Indian villagers he is visiting, and their delay in supplying his wants. The British Library copy of Boojum Ballads includes a bound-in review reprinted from the Allahabad Morning Post: it notes the author’s imitations of Kipling, instancing ‘Tommy’s Farewell to India’ as a successful example; and tempers its verdict that the work is not of a ‘a high order of poetry’ with a commendation of the author’s ‘thoughtful consideration of many subjects’.
