Kipling and Kaa[li]: via Kolkata

In ‘Kaa’s Hunting’, the deserted place is a crumbling royal ‘Lost City’ inhabited now only by the monkeys and reclaimed by the jungle, which merits a two-paragraph description. Kipling’s evocation of Cold Lairs culminates in Kaa’s mesmerising dance on the terrace by the ruined summer-house for dead queens. Kipling’s famous animosity towards the educated Bengalis requires some discussion. It arose due to family prejudice, which has been well documented. Charles Allen mentions that Kipling’s travels in 1888 included a visit to ‘The City Of Dreadful Night’ that is Kolkata, where ‘all his prejudices against both English liberals and Bengali intellectuals’ were confirmed. Kipling’s main point of attack was to describe Kolkata as a city of squalor and stench, a veritable Dantesque hell on earth—where, “They want shovels, not sentiments, in this part of the world”.