I have an odd relationship with this book. I first read it when I was a boy, probably younger than Kim when he meets his lama at the beginning of the story. At that time, I knew nothing of India or Pakistan, or Afghanistan or Tibet, nothing of Islam, Hinduism, or Buddhism, let alone Sikhs or Jains. To me, the world of Kim was like the world of Ged in [b:A Wizard of Earthsea|13642|A Wizard of Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle, #1)|Ursula K. Le Guin|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1353424536s/13642.jpg|113603]: a fantastic creation of the imagination, with rules and magic of its own. It had the additional benefit of sending me to the dictionary again and again, to learn the meanings of words like theodolite and bonze.

Now I've read the book again, for the Guardian 100o book club here on Goodreads, and while it brings me back to childhood days, it makes me wonder about questions I'd never considered before. The author, [a:Rudyard Kipling|6989|Rudyard Kipling|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1183237590p2/6989.jpg], displays his love for the region and its masala mix of cultures and languages at every turn. It's unmistakable, and it's part of the magic of the book. Is he like Kim, the "Sahib" who has become more comfortable among the "natives" than among his own?

And yet Kipling is also famously the author of the poem The White Man's Burden. The poem, and the phrase, have been used to justify colonalism and imperialism, and they certainly reek of the assumption of superiority. The emotion that stands out from the poem is frustration, however, not pride. I love India, he seems to say, but it does not love me back. I have to soldier on in spite of that, for its own good.

So now I wonder whether people throughout the subcontinent still read this book, and what they think of Kim, and Teshoo Lama, and Mahmud Ali, and Hurree Baba, and especially of the Great Game played between England and Russia where their own lands were the playing field.