The Eyes of Asia E-Book

Rudyard Kipling

• Herausgeber: E-BOOKARAMA
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Rudyard Kipling's "The Eyes of Asia" takes the reader on a remarkable journey of discovery into the heart and soul of four soldiers of the Indian Army who fought for King and the British Empire in the First World War.

First published in 1918, "The Eyes of Asia" contains four letters purporting to be written to relations or friends at home in India by soldiers of the Indian Army (part of the normal British Forces in that country down to 1947) at the time of World War I, 1914-18. They were on active service in Europe and Africa, 1915-18.

The articles forming "The Eyes of Asia" appeared in the American Saturday Evening Post in six parts over the month of May and the beginning of June 1917 and were published in book form in 1918.

"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 fictionalized 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.

Leseprobe

Table of contents

A Retired Gentleman

The Fumes of the Heart

The Private Account

A Trooper of Horse

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.