1 00:00:09,400 --> 00:00:10,960 CHEERING 2 00:00:12,040 --> 00:00:15,240 Rudyard Kipling left Tilbury to sail to Bombay 3 00:00:15,240 --> 00:00:17,920 in September, 1882. 4 00:00:26,480 --> 00:00:28,400 He was 16 - 5 00:00:28,400 --> 00:00:31,560 one of thousands of young people sailing away every year 6 00:00:31,560 --> 00:00:35,200 to take advantage of a world brimming with new possibilities. 7 00:00:37,200 --> 00:00:40,080 The British Empire was at its peak. 8 00:00:40,080 --> 00:00:43,480 It would never be as powerful or as confident again. 9 00:00:45,040 --> 00:00:48,760 India was its beating, burning heart. 10 00:00:50,240 --> 00:00:53,280 Like so many others, Kipling was a teenager 11 00:00:53,280 --> 00:00:56,920 without the education or the wealth or the connections 12 00:00:56,920 --> 00:00:59,800 to stand much chance of making it back home. 13 00:00:59,800 --> 00:01:02,960 He was seizing the opportunities of a new world. 14 00:01:05,280 --> 00:01:08,520 Just seven years later, he was to sail back to London, 15 00:01:08,520 --> 00:01:11,960 lionised as one of the most famous and celebrated writers 16 00:01:11,960 --> 00:01:13,720 in the English language. 17 00:01:15,240 --> 00:01:19,520 But today, he's unfashionable and, I think, misunderstood. 18 00:01:19,520 --> 00:01:22,360 People think of him as a stuffy reactionary - 19 00:01:22,360 --> 00:01:24,360 at best, politically incorrect, 20 00:01:24,360 --> 00:01:27,800 at worst, an apologist for all the ills of the British Empire. 21 00:01:27,800 --> 00:01:30,840 But the writer I know and love is more complex. 22 00:01:30,840 --> 00:01:33,520 In truth, the young Kipling was an outsider 23 00:01:33,520 --> 00:01:35,480 and even something of a rebel. 24 00:01:37,560 --> 00:01:41,080 This was a teenager drawn to the dark side 25 00:01:41,080 --> 00:01:45,240 and, in Colonial India, he broke every rule in the book... 26 00:01:47,720 --> 00:01:51,560 ..experimenting with mind-altering drugs, 27 00:01:51,560 --> 00:01:54,240 looking for sex where he shouldn't 28 00:01:54,240 --> 00:01:57,800 and writing about his experiences with unparalleled honesty 29 00:01:57,800 --> 00:02:01,560 in some of the most original and innovative stories ever written, 30 00:02:01,560 --> 00:02:03,960 but it was not a picture of Imperial India 31 00:02:03,960 --> 00:02:06,240 the colonialists wanted to read. 32 00:02:06,240 --> 00:02:09,280 In his rebellion, which is really what it was, 33 00:02:09,280 --> 00:02:12,560 he does expose the dirty side of British India. 34 00:02:12,560 --> 00:02:16,760 As a writer and a former soldier, Kipling has always fascinated me. 35 00:02:16,760 --> 00:02:20,040 Now I want to go back and find out how this extraordinary 36 00:02:20,040 --> 00:02:23,080 rite of passage transformed the teenage Kipling 37 00:02:23,080 --> 00:02:27,160 and how, in the process, he changed our understanding of India forever. 38 00:02:41,560 --> 00:02:44,800 What must it have been like to disembark at Bombay 39 00:02:44,800 --> 00:02:48,200 on the evening of the 18th of October, 1882? 40 00:02:50,280 --> 00:02:52,760 Kipling had lived here before as a child, 41 00:02:52,760 --> 00:02:55,960 but had been sent away for 11 miserable years. 42 00:02:57,120 --> 00:03:00,160 Now he was coming home to his beloved India... 43 00:03:01,240 --> 00:03:04,120 ..for Kipling later wrote that he returned to India 44 00:03:04,120 --> 00:03:06,280 as a prince entering his kingdom. 45 00:03:08,560 --> 00:03:11,840 And the contrast with the grey monotony of his childhood years 46 00:03:11,840 --> 00:03:14,600 in Southsea couldn't have been any greater. 47 00:03:18,720 --> 00:03:23,160 There was the noise, the sudden heat, like opening an oven door, 48 00:03:23,160 --> 00:03:26,040 there were the smells, 49 00:03:26,040 --> 00:03:29,120 there was the brilliant coloured saris - fuchsia pink, 50 00:03:29,120 --> 00:03:32,520 blue, emerald green - and masses of people. 51 00:03:42,720 --> 00:03:44,680 TRAIN WHISTLES 52 00:03:46,280 --> 00:03:51,000 But Kipling's destination was to an outpost 900 miles away, 53 00:03:51,000 --> 00:03:53,720 in Lahore, where his family lived... 54 00:03:55,280 --> 00:03:58,520 ..a frontier town ruled over by just 70 colonials. 55 00:04:00,560 --> 00:04:03,960 Lahore had been in British hands for less than 35 years. 56 00:04:05,040 --> 00:04:09,160 It was the last major Indian city to become part of the Empire. 57 00:04:11,320 --> 00:04:14,880 But, although they were far from home, the Victorians who came here 58 00:04:14,880 --> 00:04:17,560 were keen to create a very distinctive little England 59 00:04:17,560 --> 00:04:19,040 in the Punjab. 60 00:04:20,080 --> 00:04:22,520 There are two quite different Lahores. 61 00:04:22,520 --> 00:04:25,560 There's the Civil Lines, which is where the British lived. 62 00:04:25,560 --> 00:04:28,600 This is well laid out with nice big bungalows 63 00:04:28,600 --> 00:04:32,240 and with large gardens and everybody is living there very safely. 64 00:04:32,240 --> 00:04:36,760 And then there's a wall and then within that wall is the Old City 65 00:04:36,760 --> 00:04:40,600 and this is a place of squalor and dirt and disease, where the people 66 00:04:40,600 --> 00:04:44,440 are living cheek by jowl and it's a place where the British do not go. 67 00:04:45,440 --> 00:04:50,760 # He's an Englishman... # 68 00:04:50,760 --> 00:04:53,040 Ignoring the culture of India, 69 00:04:53,040 --> 00:04:56,800 the British here were obsessed with preserving the rituals of home, 70 00:04:56,800 --> 00:04:59,520 at work and at play, in what they ate 71 00:04:59,520 --> 00:05:02,040 and, of course, in what they wore. 72 00:05:02,040 --> 00:05:06,440 # That he is an Englishman 73 00:05:06,440 --> 00:05:10,240 # That he is an Englishman... # 74 00:05:10,240 --> 00:05:13,080 One gets this sense with the British in India 75 00:05:13,080 --> 00:05:16,360 of a constant fight for standards in dress. 76 00:05:16,360 --> 00:05:19,800 It's part of their fight against the country itself. 77 00:05:19,800 --> 00:05:22,240 It certainly took on a psychological aspect. 78 00:05:22,240 --> 00:05:24,800 It was partly a fight against the country itself 79 00:05:24,800 --> 00:05:27,680 and partly an expression of being the ruling caste. 80 00:05:27,680 --> 00:05:30,760 They actually did change for dinner when they were in the jungle. 81 00:05:30,760 --> 00:05:32,560 It wasn't a fallacy. 82 00:05:32,560 --> 00:05:36,240 # He remains an Englishman... # 83 00:05:36,240 --> 00:05:40,280 They were keeping up standards in front of the Indians. 84 00:05:40,280 --> 00:05:43,320 # E-E-E-E-E-E 85 00:05:43,320 --> 00:05:47,560 # Englishman. # 86 00:05:49,040 --> 00:05:53,400 Lahore had a Victorian railway and an elegant town hall. 87 00:05:53,400 --> 00:05:56,760 It had museums and public gardens that equalled those 88 00:05:56,760 --> 00:05:59,840 in Brighton or Leeds and it even had a school of art 89 00:05:59,840 --> 00:06:02,440 where Kipling's father was the principal. 90 00:06:04,280 --> 00:06:07,760 But Lockwood Kipling was very different from his colonial peers. 91 00:06:07,760 --> 00:06:10,960 Instead of turning away from Indian culture, he studied it. 92 00:06:13,840 --> 00:06:18,040 Rudyard Kipling's father was one of the key champions 93 00:06:18,040 --> 00:06:21,080 of Indian art and craft movement 94 00:06:21,080 --> 00:06:23,000 in the whole of India. 95 00:06:23,000 --> 00:06:26,600 One of his daughters said about Lockwood Kipling that 96 00:06:26,600 --> 00:06:31,240 he knew something about everything and everything about something. 97 00:06:31,240 --> 00:06:35,200 And it is only logical that his son, 98 00:06:35,200 --> 00:06:40,560 with this literary sort of genius in him, would be inspired 99 00:06:40,560 --> 00:06:45,080 and his imagination will be, you know, evoked 100 00:06:45,080 --> 00:06:49,160 by the kind of images that he sort of confronted 101 00:06:49,160 --> 00:06:51,200 and lived with in India. 102 00:06:52,240 --> 00:06:55,240 His father was an important influence on him, but Kipling 103 00:06:55,240 --> 00:06:58,720 wasn't an academic and his first challenge was to find a job. 104 00:06:59,720 --> 00:07:03,200 Luckily, there was an opening that would suit him well, 105 00:07:03,200 --> 00:07:06,480 working on the local newspaper - The Civil and Military Gazette. 106 00:07:07,560 --> 00:07:11,240 Charles Allen's great-grandfather was the man who gave him the job. 107 00:07:12,320 --> 00:07:16,000 My grandfather, I suppose you could say he was the Murdoch of his age 108 00:07:16,000 --> 00:07:18,720 in India. He had two newspapers - one, The Pioneer, 109 00:07:18,720 --> 00:07:21,040 which was the biggest newspaper in India, 110 00:07:21,040 --> 00:07:24,520 and then there was a strange little newspaper right out in Lahore, 111 00:07:24,520 --> 00:07:27,520 right out on the frontier, The Civil and Military Gazette, 112 00:07:27,520 --> 00:07:29,600 and that sums it up exactly. 113 00:07:29,600 --> 00:07:33,200 It was for a tiny community of civil administrators and military men 114 00:07:33,200 --> 00:07:35,520 and that really was its clientele. 115 00:07:35,520 --> 00:07:38,920 But it had to have an editor and it had to have an assistant editor, 116 00:07:38,920 --> 00:07:41,000 so young Rudy, at 16, 117 00:07:41,000 --> 00:07:44,240 he's appointed the second most important man on the newspaper 118 00:07:44,240 --> 00:07:47,280 and he's in charge with putting it to bed every night. 119 00:07:47,280 --> 00:07:51,480 It's an astonishing responsibility, you could say, for a 16-year-old. 120 00:07:52,560 --> 00:07:55,800 Dropped into the deep end of newspaper publishing without 121 00:07:55,800 --> 00:07:59,280 any training, Kipling had to learn quickly to write and sub-edit 122 00:07:59,280 --> 00:08:01,240 up against tight deadlines. 123 00:08:02,280 --> 00:08:04,680 Kipling would later describe his time at the CMG 124 00:08:04,680 --> 00:08:06,560 as his "seven years' hard". 125 00:08:06,560 --> 00:08:09,160 Hard labour, perhaps, but a fantastic apprenticeship 126 00:08:09,160 --> 00:08:10,800 for an aspiring writer. 127 00:08:13,240 --> 00:08:14,800 To begin with, 128 00:08:14,800 --> 00:08:17,720 Kipling wasn't allowed to write about the real India. 129 00:08:17,720 --> 00:08:21,160 He was confined instead to the narrow world of the Anglo-Indians. 130 00:08:22,240 --> 00:08:25,880 Like a cub reporter in a Home Counties small town, 131 00:08:25,880 --> 00:08:28,960 he was first assigned to write up accounts of Gymkhanas, 132 00:08:28,960 --> 00:08:30,880 tea parties and polo. 133 00:08:32,760 --> 00:08:36,840 "Why will Lahore not officially recognize a Gymkhana? 134 00:08:36,840 --> 00:08:40,880 "On Thursday evening, for instance, the attendance was of the thinnest 135 00:08:40,880 --> 00:08:44,560 "and the ladies present might have been counted on one's fingers. 136 00:08:44,560 --> 00:08:47,600 "Beyond comparing symptoms of cold and influenza 137 00:08:47,600 --> 00:08:50,840 "or discussing the comparative merits of quinine pills 138 00:08:50,840 --> 00:08:54,240 "versus quinine raw, we have little left to talk about." 139 00:08:56,320 --> 00:09:00,000 Kipling's earliest reports reflected back to the Anglo-Indians in Lahore 140 00:09:00,000 --> 00:09:02,560 the image of themselves that they liked the best, 141 00:09:02,560 --> 00:09:05,920 confirming that they were more British than the British back home. 142 00:09:08,320 --> 00:09:11,680 Their social centre was here - the Punjab Club. 143 00:09:11,680 --> 00:09:15,040 The club was an all-male preserve for Europeans only 144 00:09:15,040 --> 00:09:18,560 and there were fewer than 100 people eligible in the whole of Lahore. 145 00:09:18,560 --> 00:09:21,520 Kipling wrote of the club rather disparagingly. 146 00:09:21,520 --> 00:09:24,760 It was a place where "bachelors mostly gathered to eat meals 147 00:09:24,760 --> 00:09:27,800 "of no merit with men whose merits they knew well." 148 00:09:29,240 --> 00:09:32,520 Still only a teenager, Kipling was mixing with some of the most 149 00:09:32,520 --> 00:09:36,280 important men in the Punjab, but he found their company dreary. 150 00:09:36,280 --> 00:09:39,280 There was no-one his own age and the other members felt 151 00:09:39,280 --> 00:09:42,560 that young Rudyard had a caddishly dirty tongue. 152 00:09:42,560 --> 00:09:44,280 He would later write, 153 00:09:44,280 --> 00:09:47,960 "There is no society in India as we understand the word. 154 00:09:47,960 --> 00:09:50,320 "There are no books, no pictures, 155 00:09:50,320 --> 00:09:53,640 "no conversations worth listening to for recreation's sake. 156 00:09:53,640 --> 00:09:57,680 "No-one talks lightly and amusingly as they do in England. 157 00:09:57,680 --> 00:10:00,520 "They don't seem to realize any of the beauties of life. 158 00:10:00,520 --> 00:10:02,680 "Perhaps they haven't the time." 159 00:10:03,760 --> 00:10:06,080 This is obviously gentleman members only. 160 00:10:06,080 --> 00:10:09,040 'The Punjab Club is still open for business but, of course, 161 00:10:09,040 --> 00:10:11,080 'the members are now Pakistani. 162 00:10:11,080 --> 00:10:13,800 'And 12 years ago, they admitted the first woman, 163 00:10:13,800 --> 00:10:15,720 'journalist Nelofar Bakhtyar.' 164 00:10:15,720 --> 00:10:17,640 So here we are. 165 00:10:18,800 --> 00:10:22,000 Kipling writes in his memoirs that the club became 166 00:10:22,000 --> 00:10:24,280 "the whole of my outside world" 167 00:10:24,280 --> 00:10:28,280 because he would toil at the offices of The Civil and Military Gazette 168 00:10:28,280 --> 00:10:31,000 and then come here at the club for his dinners. 169 00:10:31,000 --> 00:10:34,840 He would be heckled mercilessly at times 170 00:10:34,840 --> 00:10:37,800 for what was published in the paper, 171 00:10:37,800 --> 00:10:40,800 even though, at that time, he was just an assistant editor 172 00:10:40,800 --> 00:10:44,000 and he really had no control over the editorial policy. 173 00:10:44,000 --> 00:10:48,040 Kipling would have to apologize for the mistakes that his editor made 174 00:10:48,040 --> 00:10:51,520 and the editor was married so he never used to come to the club. 175 00:10:51,520 --> 00:10:54,960 So Kipling bore the brunt... Yes, he bore the brunt of it. 176 00:10:54,960 --> 00:10:58,800 He spent only five of his 70 years in Lahore 177 00:10:58,800 --> 00:11:01,760 but those five years were extremely crucial 178 00:11:01,760 --> 00:11:04,720 in his development as a writer. 179 00:11:04,720 --> 00:11:09,600 And all of this happened because he had the innate curiosity, 180 00:11:09,600 --> 00:11:12,200 as it were, to step out of the bubble 181 00:11:12,200 --> 00:11:14,240 in which he had first entered. 182 00:11:14,240 --> 00:11:16,800 Here were the people sitting in their clubs 183 00:11:16,800 --> 00:11:20,040 and really not bothering to look out of their window, as it were, 184 00:11:20,040 --> 00:11:23,280 while this whole colourful circus is going past 185 00:11:23,280 --> 00:11:25,800 and they are completely immune to it. 186 00:11:26,840 --> 00:11:28,800 CHANTING 187 00:11:37,480 --> 00:11:39,640 locked away in the club - 188 00:11:39,640 --> 00:11:41,160 it was also fear. 189 00:11:44,520 --> 00:11:47,560 The Indian mutiny which had brought colonial rule in India 190 00:11:47,560 --> 00:11:50,560 to the brink of collapse was only a generation away. 191 00:11:50,560 --> 00:11:52,600 GUNFIRE 192 00:11:54,160 --> 00:11:58,440 To maintain order, 30,000 soldiers were now stationed across India. 193 00:11:59,560 --> 00:12:03,200 Lahore was one of the most important military outposts. 194 00:12:04,200 --> 00:12:06,280 Bored by the old men in the club, 195 00:12:06,280 --> 00:12:10,120 the young soldiers were the only men of Kipling's age in the city. 196 00:12:10,120 --> 00:12:13,920 They were to become an important inspiration for his writing. 197 00:12:19,880 --> 00:12:22,280 Kipling was fascinated by the military. 198 00:12:22,280 --> 00:12:25,560 It's been suggested that he always regretted his poor eyesight 199 00:12:25,560 --> 00:12:27,800 prevented him from going to Sandhurst, 200 00:12:27,800 --> 00:12:31,240 so it's no surprise that he was impressed by and enjoyed socialising 201 00:12:31,240 --> 00:12:34,680 with the junior officers who were stationed here in the Lahore Fort, 202 00:12:34,680 --> 00:12:38,440 waiting to be deployed up to the north-west frontier provinces. 203 00:12:42,000 --> 00:12:44,840 These were men with exciting stories to tell 204 00:12:44,840 --> 00:12:48,480 and Kipling writes of long, hot, drunken evenings 205 00:12:48,480 --> 00:12:50,920 that went on late into the night. 206 00:12:57,040 --> 00:12:59,800 The soldiers on fort duty or confined to barracks 207 00:12:59,800 --> 00:13:02,720 had a hard time of it in the Indian summer. 208 00:13:02,720 --> 00:13:05,760 Boredom, disease and heat could claim more victims 209 00:13:05,760 --> 00:13:08,520 than a skirmish on the Afghan frontier. 210 00:13:08,520 --> 00:13:12,480 Reporting for the CMG, Kipling wrote about fights between soldiers 211 00:13:12,480 --> 00:13:16,280 ending in them killing each other, arising from temper in the heat. 212 00:13:16,280 --> 00:13:19,520 And in his early stories, Kipling would write of soldiers 213 00:13:19,520 --> 00:13:23,200 cracking up with the boredom and isolation of Indian barracks life. 214 00:13:26,880 --> 00:13:30,240 Kipling's first exploration of this subject was in some verse 215 00:13:30,240 --> 00:13:33,160 written just over a year after arriving in India. 216 00:13:37,480 --> 00:13:40,240 In Kipling's poem, On Fort Duty, 217 00:13:40,240 --> 00:13:43,200 the soldiers cooped up here in the Lahore Fort 218 00:13:43,200 --> 00:13:45,560 dream of action on the frontier 219 00:13:45,560 --> 00:13:50,040 where the passes ring with rifles and the sound of Afghan raids. 220 00:13:50,040 --> 00:13:53,960 "I look across the ramparts to the northward and the snow, 221 00:13:53,960 --> 00:13:56,720 "to the far Cherat cantonments 222 00:13:56,720 --> 00:13:59,280 "but, alas, I cannot go. 223 00:13:59,280 --> 00:14:02,920 "Oh, its everlasting gun-drill and eight o'clock parades, 224 00:14:02,920 --> 00:14:06,080 "its cleaning up of mortars, likewise of carronades, 225 00:14:06,080 --> 00:14:10,560 "while the passes ring with rifles and the noise of Afghan raids. 226 00:14:10,560 --> 00:14:15,400 "And I look across the ramparts to the river, broad and grey, 227 00:14:15,400 --> 00:14:17,280 "and I think of merry England 228 00:14:17,280 --> 00:14:19,960 "where the festive Horse Guards play." 229 00:14:21,120 --> 00:14:23,680 Kipling may have been impressed by the officers, 230 00:14:23,680 --> 00:14:26,600 but it was the ordinary soldiers he was really interested in. 231 00:14:26,600 --> 00:14:29,240 Unusually for someone of his background at the time, 232 00:14:29,240 --> 00:14:32,520 Kipling socialised with private soldiers and, over beer, 233 00:14:32,520 --> 00:14:35,760 he studied the way they talked and the way they thought. 234 00:14:35,760 --> 00:14:40,800 I think we've also got to remember that young Kipling is an outsider. 235 00:14:40,800 --> 00:14:42,800 Look at him, he is a runt. 236 00:14:42,800 --> 00:14:47,200 He's very short, he's myopic, he can hardly see without his glasses 237 00:14:47,200 --> 00:14:49,560 and, on top of that, he's dyspraxic. 238 00:14:49,560 --> 00:14:52,600 He's totally disjointed. He keeps falling off his horse. 239 00:14:52,600 --> 00:14:55,280 He can't play sports. He really is an outsider. 240 00:14:55,280 --> 00:14:58,760 The people he admires most of all are the upright British soldiers - 241 00:14:58,760 --> 00:15:00,480 the officers in particular. 242 00:15:00,480 --> 00:15:03,600 But, in that process, he learns about this other community, 243 00:15:03,600 --> 00:15:06,960 this other group of outsiders - the ordinary soldier. 244 00:15:10,560 --> 00:15:13,040 Kipling would later immortalise these men 245 00:15:13,040 --> 00:15:15,040 as Tommy Atkins and Danny Deever 246 00:15:15,040 --> 00:15:18,360 and his three musketeers, Learoyd, Mulvaney and Ortheris. 247 00:15:19,520 --> 00:15:22,080 Kipling seemed to get along with the soldiers, 248 00:15:22,080 --> 00:15:25,520 but whether or not he got along with the officers is another matter. 249 00:15:25,520 --> 00:15:29,000 One member of the general staff would write disparagingly of Kipling 250 00:15:29,000 --> 00:15:32,600 that he was disapproved of as being mutinous and above his station. 251 00:15:38,000 --> 00:15:40,040 'Polo is still played in Lahore 252 00:15:40,040 --> 00:15:43,240 'and, while there are no British soldiers here, there are plenty 253 00:15:43,240 --> 00:15:47,040 'of old soldiers from the Pakistani Army who know Kipling's work well.' 254 00:15:47,040 --> 00:15:49,800 Kipling loved soldiers and he loved adventure 255 00:15:49,800 --> 00:15:53,160 so, Major Mawaz, you had the sort of adventures, by the sound of it, 256 00:15:53,160 --> 00:15:55,880 that Kipling would have written a story about. 257 00:15:55,880 --> 00:16:00,560 I was bitten by the most poisonous snake in the desert, I survived. 258 00:16:00,560 --> 00:16:04,120 I had three bullets in my body, I survived. 259 00:16:04,120 --> 00:16:07,040 I was missing, believed killed, I survived. 260 00:16:07,040 --> 00:16:10,840 Then I was supposed to be killed by these Muktis and Indians. 261 00:16:10,840 --> 00:16:13,560 And you know the Muktis would take your eyes out, 262 00:16:13,560 --> 00:16:16,520 they would cut your ears - that's how they killed you. 263 00:16:16,520 --> 00:16:20,560 I had been told three times, "Your time is tomorrow. 264 00:16:20,560 --> 00:16:24,040 "In the morning, that's what's going to happen to you." 265 00:16:24,040 --> 00:16:28,000 So, by all standards, I should have been dead a long time ago, 266 00:16:28,000 --> 00:16:29,520 but... 267 00:16:29,520 --> 00:16:31,720 somebody up there likes me, you know? 268 00:16:31,720 --> 00:16:34,040 You're the unbreakable soldier. 269 00:16:34,040 --> 00:16:35,960 Yes. Can't do anything to him. 270 00:16:35,960 --> 00:16:37,600 LAUGHTER 271 00:16:39,520 --> 00:16:43,320 I'm here trying to follow in young Kipling's footsteps 272 00:16:43,320 --> 00:16:46,040 and it's strange because his reputation today 273 00:16:46,040 --> 00:16:48,200 is maybe not as popular as it once was. 274 00:16:48,200 --> 00:16:52,520 I think people think he represents the part of the British Empire 275 00:16:52,520 --> 00:16:55,480 which is bad, but actually... No, no, no. 276 00:16:56,520 --> 00:17:00,960 You see, as we're growing, the generations are changing, 277 00:17:00,960 --> 00:17:04,240 and all stories go away - they die. 278 00:17:04,240 --> 00:17:08,480 But if you ask older people my age or his age, 279 00:17:08,480 --> 00:17:10,320 they all know Kipling. 280 00:17:10,320 --> 00:17:12,760 They all know he was associated with us, 281 00:17:12,760 --> 00:17:16,200 he was very much a part of this country for seven, eight years. 282 00:17:20,440 --> 00:17:22,440 TRAIN WHISTLES 283 00:17:26,040 --> 00:17:29,480 Spending time with soldiers made Kipling more determined than ever 284 00:17:29,480 --> 00:17:31,800 to get out from behind his desk. 285 00:17:31,800 --> 00:17:34,320 His chance came at the age of 18. 286 00:17:34,320 --> 00:17:37,040 He was made special correspondent for the Gazette 287 00:17:37,040 --> 00:17:41,040 and allowed to go out and report on the real India for the first time. 288 00:17:42,600 --> 00:17:45,080 "So, soon as my paper could trust me a little 289 00:17:45,080 --> 00:17:48,320 "and I had behaved well at routine work, I was sent out. 290 00:17:48,320 --> 00:17:51,760 "Communal riots under the shadow of the Mosque of Wazir Khan, 291 00:17:51,760 --> 00:17:54,280 "visits of viceroys to neighbouring princes 292 00:17:54,280 --> 00:17:56,560 "on the edge of the great Indian desert, 293 00:17:56,560 --> 00:18:00,320 "reviews of armies expecting to move against Russia next week." 294 00:18:06,240 --> 00:18:09,200 Given licence to travel and report across India, 295 00:18:09,200 --> 00:18:11,800 a new world was opening up. 296 00:18:11,800 --> 00:18:15,320 No longer confined to writing reports of Gymkhanas, 297 00:18:15,320 --> 00:18:18,240 Kipling enjoyed the real freedom of being a journalist 298 00:18:18,240 --> 00:18:20,000 for the first time 299 00:18:20,000 --> 00:18:23,440 as the outsider looking in, making sense of what he sees. 300 00:18:27,520 --> 00:18:31,760 He seems to be so good at going out, looking at a subject, 301 00:18:31,760 --> 00:18:35,160 studying it from all its aspects, asking the right questions, 302 00:18:35,160 --> 00:18:37,800 finding the essence of that particular skill, 303 00:18:37,800 --> 00:18:41,040 that particular subject, and then keeping it in his head. 304 00:18:41,040 --> 00:18:44,880 He does have, like all the great writers, an extraordinary memory. 305 00:18:44,880 --> 00:18:48,560 All the information he needs is tucked away and he brings it out. 306 00:18:48,560 --> 00:18:51,920 He learned how to be short and to be brief and to be accurate 307 00:18:51,920 --> 00:18:54,520 and those qualities helped him. 308 00:18:54,520 --> 00:18:58,160 The other thing, he had a huge gift for observation. 309 00:18:59,280 --> 00:19:03,040 As a writer, he was finding his subject and growing fast. 310 00:19:04,080 --> 00:19:06,720 But Kipling's opportunities for travel came to an end 311 00:19:06,720 --> 00:19:08,720 when the weather turned hot. 312 00:19:09,800 --> 00:19:13,240 Like most Europeans, his editor would flee from the unbearable 313 00:19:13,240 --> 00:19:16,960 Lahore summers, taking trains to much cooler hill stations. 314 00:19:21,520 --> 00:19:23,800 Kipling was stuck in the city, 315 00:19:23,800 --> 00:19:27,760 turning out The Civil and Military Gazette, sometimes single-handedly. 316 00:19:27,760 --> 00:19:30,520 He was isolated and alone 317 00:19:30,520 --> 00:19:34,320 and his nervous disposition started to get the better of him. 318 00:19:34,320 --> 00:19:38,920 Often sick and terrified of catching a fatal illness, he couldn't sleep. 319 00:19:40,040 --> 00:19:44,320 His night terrors grew worse and he started pacing about outside, 320 00:19:44,320 --> 00:19:47,480 increasingly curious about the city at night. 321 00:19:48,560 --> 00:19:52,080 Inevitably, he was drawn like a magnet to the medieval city 322 00:19:52,080 --> 00:19:56,080 of inner Lahore and the wall that separated east from west. 323 00:19:56,080 --> 00:20:00,120 It was a dividing line that few English people had ever crossed. 324 00:20:04,840 --> 00:20:07,840 He hated the hot weather, he hated being alone. 325 00:20:07,840 --> 00:20:11,080 His parents that he's been living with have disappeared to the hills 326 00:20:11,080 --> 00:20:13,280 and suddenly he's alone in this huge house 327 00:20:13,280 --> 00:20:15,280 and he starts to have breakdowns. 328 00:20:15,280 --> 00:20:18,600 He's really frightened that he's going to catch a disease and die 329 00:20:18,600 --> 00:20:20,720 or that he's going to overheat and die 330 00:20:20,720 --> 00:20:22,520 and he walks from room to room, 331 00:20:22,520 --> 00:20:25,000 he gets his servants to throw water over him 332 00:20:25,000 --> 00:20:28,240 and he cannot get any sleep and this is part of what makes him 333 00:20:28,240 --> 00:20:31,560 take up his night walks, when he starts to wander in the night. 334 00:20:34,800 --> 00:20:37,840 What he found when he crossed the wall 335 00:20:37,840 --> 00:20:40,920 was a hidden city that never sleeps. 336 00:20:53,520 --> 00:20:56,000 "Often the night got into my head 337 00:20:56,000 --> 00:21:00,080 "and I would wander till dawn in all manner of odd places... 338 00:21:00,080 --> 00:21:03,520 "liquor-shops, gambling and opium-dens, 339 00:21:03,520 --> 00:21:07,600 "wayside entertainment such as puppet-shows, native dances 340 00:21:07,600 --> 00:21:11,440 "or in and about the narrow gullies under the Mosque of Wazir Khan 341 00:21:11,440 --> 00:21:14,080 "for the sheer sake of looking. 342 00:21:14,080 --> 00:21:16,520 "Sometimes the police would challenge, 343 00:21:16,520 --> 00:21:19,000 "but I knew most of their officers. 344 00:21:19,000 --> 00:21:22,400 "Having no position to consider and my trade enforcing it, 345 00:21:22,400 --> 00:21:25,920 "I could move at will in the fourth dimension." 346 00:21:30,040 --> 00:21:33,240 Having crossed a barrier that separated the two cultures, 347 00:21:33,240 --> 00:21:35,640 Kipling discovered, as he wrote, 348 00:21:35,640 --> 00:21:39,440 that "much of real Indian life goes on in the hot weather nights." 349 00:21:44,560 --> 00:21:48,000 It wasn't just in Kipling's time that Europeans didn't really come 350 00:21:48,000 --> 00:21:51,440 into the walled city. We've been advised to be very careful 351 00:21:51,440 --> 00:21:53,280 when we're wandering about 352 00:21:53,280 --> 00:21:56,040 and, even in the space of this little exploration, 353 00:21:56,040 --> 00:21:58,880 we've picked up a policeman wielding an AK-47 354 00:21:58,880 --> 00:22:01,000 who's clearing people off behind us. 355 00:22:01,000 --> 00:22:04,560 It feels quite unusual to have a sense of people watching you in that 356 00:22:04,560 --> 00:22:08,040 regard and it must have been what Kipling felt like when he first came 357 00:22:08,040 --> 00:22:11,720 down here as possibly the only white face those people had ever seen. 358 00:22:16,440 --> 00:22:19,560 What Kipling saw here fascinated him. 359 00:22:21,720 --> 00:22:25,560 "The yard-wide gullies into which the moonlight cannot struggle 360 00:22:25,560 --> 00:22:29,040 "are full of mystery, stories of life and death 361 00:22:29,040 --> 00:22:33,040 "and intrigue of which we, the Mall abiding, open-windowed, 362 00:22:33,040 --> 00:22:37,280 "purdah-less English know nothing and believe less. 363 00:22:37,280 --> 00:22:42,520 "Properly exploited, our City would yield a store of novels." 364 00:22:47,760 --> 00:22:50,760 And, as this teenager started to break one taboo, 365 00:22:50,760 --> 00:22:53,000 others would follow. 366 00:22:53,000 --> 00:22:56,600 It wasn't long before he began another form of experimentation. 367 00:23:05,400 --> 00:23:08,040 In the middle of one particularly stifling night, 368 00:23:08,040 --> 00:23:13,320 on September 16th, 1884, Kipling was woken with terrible stomach pains. 369 00:23:13,320 --> 00:23:17,120 His manservant brought him an opium pipe to relieve the pain. 370 00:23:18,600 --> 00:23:20,240 Kipling describes the effect - 371 00:23:20,240 --> 00:23:23,520 "Presently, I felt the cramps in my leg dying out 372 00:23:23,520 --> 00:23:26,120 "and then my tummy rested 373 00:23:26,120 --> 00:23:30,280 "and a minute or two later it felt as though I fell through the floor." 374 00:23:31,200 --> 00:23:33,200 INTENSE MUSIC 375 00:23:43,280 --> 00:23:46,920 He continued to rely on drugs, in the form of opium, morphine 376 00:23:46,920 --> 00:23:50,480 and Indian hemp, to get him through Lahore's hot summer nights. 377 00:24:00,040 --> 00:24:04,480 "The dense, wet heat that hung over the face of land like a blanket 378 00:24:04,480 --> 00:24:06,920 "prevented all hope of sleep. 379 00:24:08,000 --> 00:24:12,000 "It was impossible to sit still in the dark, empty, echoing house 380 00:24:12,000 --> 00:24:15,080 "and watch the punkah beat the dead air, 381 00:24:15,080 --> 00:24:19,040 "so, at ten o'clock of the night, I set my walking-stick on end 382 00:24:19,040 --> 00:24:23,200 "in the middle of the garden and waited to see how it would fall. 383 00:24:23,200 --> 00:24:25,560 "It pointed directly down the moonlit road 384 00:24:25,560 --> 00:24:28,200 "that leads to the City of Dreadful Night." 385 00:24:29,800 --> 00:24:33,480 The City of Dreadful Night kept drawing Kipling back in. 386 00:24:34,760 --> 00:24:38,040 The opium-dens have now gone but, inside the medieval city, 387 00:24:38,040 --> 00:24:40,880 it can still sometimes be possible to recapture 388 00:24:40,880 --> 00:24:44,080 some of the drug-fuelled excitement of Kipling's Lahore. 389 00:24:46,560 --> 00:24:51,040 I've come to a Sufi shrine to see a festival of drumming and dancing. 390 00:24:51,040 --> 00:24:54,080 It's the sort of mystical side of religion here 391 00:24:54,080 --> 00:24:58,040 that even in Kipling's day was noted for being quite wild. 392 00:24:58,040 --> 00:25:02,160 It has a reputation even today of people getting spiritually 393 00:25:02,160 --> 00:25:04,840 and also physically off their heads. 394 00:25:04,840 --> 00:25:08,080 And the atmosphere is a little bit like coming to a festival. 395 00:25:08,080 --> 00:25:11,040 We've been accosted in the street by people who have come up to us 396 00:25:11,040 --> 00:25:13,280 and said, "We're very excited you're here. 397 00:25:13,280 --> 00:25:15,240 "You're going to see the real Pakistan." 398 00:25:15,240 --> 00:25:17,040 A Pakistan of peace and love, 399 00:25:17,040 --> 00:25:19,520 not the Pakistan of international terrorism. 400 00:25:19,520 --> 00:25:21,520 This, the dancing, the excitement, 401 00:25:21,520 --> 00:25:24,760 this is apparently the real Pakistan and I can't help but think 402 00:25:24,760 --> 00:25:28,640 this is probably the Lahore that Kipling found and that excited him 403 00:25:28,640 --> 00:25:32,240 and that probably inspired some of his own nocturnal activities. 404 00:25:50,440 --> 00:25:52,440 LOUD RHYTHMIC DRUMMING 405 00:26:31,560 --> 00:26:33,240 It's absolutely awesome. 406 00:26:33,240 --> 00:26:35,040 The drumming, which is amazing, 407 00:26:35,040 --> 00:26:38,080 and the crowd building up into this chant, 408 00:26:38,080 --> 00:26:41,720 a bit like before the biggest act in a night at a club comes on. 409 00:26:41,720 --> 00:26:45,680 And, over in the dark corners, you can see people rolling up. 410 00:26:45,680 --> 00:26:48,560 But in the main centre, everyone is getting ready 411 00:26:48,560 --> 00:26:50,520 into this frenetic dance. 412 00:26:54,280 --> 00:26:57,760 An anonymous article in the CMG attributed to Kipling 413 00:26:57,760 --> 00:27:00,520 seems to describe an opium trip. 414 00:27:05,520 --> 00:27:07,560 "Here you are alone, 415 00:27:07,560 --> 00:27:11,440 "utterly alone on the verge of a waste of moonlit sand. 416 00:27:12,720 --> 00:27:17,080 "Hundreds and thousands of miles away lies a small, silver pool 417 00:27:17,080 --> 00:27:19,480 "not bigger than a splash of rain water. 418 00:27:20,600 --> 00:27:23,360 "A stone is dropped into its bosom. 419 00:27:23,360 --> 00:27:25,600 "and, as the circles spread, 420 00:27:25,600 --> 00:27:29,200 "the silver lines broaden from east to west 421 00:27:29,200 --> 00:27:33,400 "and rush up with inconceivable rapidity to the level of your eyes. 422 00:27:33,400 --> 00:27:35,920 "You shudder and attempt to fly." 423 00:27:45,480 --> 00:27:47,520 DRUMMING 424 00:27:52,200 --> 00:27:55,880 You think of Timothy Leary and drugs and awakening of consciousness - 425 00:27:55,880 --> 00:27:59,480 you really feel that something like this happens with this youngster. 426 00:27:59,480 --> 00:28:05,240 This process of hallucination opens up his mind and it stays open. 427 00:28:05,240 --> 00:28:08,840 It's almost as if he's kind of thrown off all his fears, 428 00:28:08,840 --> 00:28:12,520 having gone through this process, and he seems to now to write 429 00:28:12,520 --> 00:28:15,280 from this time onwards with a great freedom 430 00:28:15,280 --> 00:28:18,600 but, in particular, he seems to revel 431 00:28:18,600 --> 00:28:22,080 in the squalor and the dirt and the disease 432 00:28:22,080 --> 00:28:24,520 and he says, "I am in love with India, 433 00:28:24,520 --> 00:28:28,000 "I am in love with all the dirt and the smells and sounds," 434 00:28:28,000 --> 00:28:30,720 and this is a complete change in attitude. 435 00:28:30,720 --> 00:28:34,560 And he even says, "I now feel like a cock crowing on a dunghill, 436 00:28:34,560 --> 00:28:38,320 "that this is my empire and I can write about this land. 437 00:28:38,320 --> 00:28:40,960 "I really feel like a king in his own country." 438 00:28:43,800 --> 00:28:45,840 Kipling's experience of opium 439 00:28:45,840 --> 00:28:48,480 inspired his first published short story, 440 00:28:48,480 --> 00:28:52,720 the tale of an opium addict eking out his last days in a drug den. 441 00:28:55,000 --> 00:28:57,560 "I've seen so many come in and out 442 00:28:57,560 --> 00:29:00,080 "and I've seen so many die here on the mats 443 00:29:00,080 --> 00:29:03,080 "that I should be afraid of dying in the open now. 444 00:29:03,080 --> 00:29:06,320 "I've seen some things that people would call strange enough 445 00:29:06,320 --> 00:29:09,160 "but nothing is strange when you're on the black smoke, 446 00:29:09,160 --> 00:29:11,200 "except the black smoke. 447 00:29:11,200 --> 00:29:14,200 "And if it was, it wouldn't matter." 448 00:29:16,680 --> 00:29:18,760 The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows 449 00:29:18,760 --> 00:29:21,800 is the story that changed everything for Kipling. 450 00:29:21,800 --> 00:29:24,040 I think it's the first time he realizes 451 00:29:24,040 --> 00:29:27,920 the power of fiction as opposed to journalism to tell us truths. 452 00:29:29,080 --> 00:29:32,760 It's the first of his tales of outcasts and derelicts - 453 00:29:32,760 --> 00:29:36,040 Europeans who've slipped through the cracks in India. 454 00:29:36,040 --> 00:29:38,720 It's the first example of his original vision 455 00:29:38,720 --> 00:29:40,960 of the dark side of Indian life. 456 00:29:42,080 --> 00:29:45,200 And it's all the more remarkable that he managed to publish it 457 00:29:45,200 --> 00:29:47,560 in The Civil and Military Gazette. 458 00:29:51,160 --> 00:29:54,720 Opium gave Kipling access to layers of Indian life 459 00:29:54,720 --> 00:29:57,480 which the British had so wilfully ignored. 460 00:29:58,560 --> 00:30:02,600 Kipling wrote, "Underneath our excellent administrative system, 461 00:30:02,600 --> 00:30:05,280 "under the piles of reports and statistics, 462 00:30:05,280 --> 00:30:08,040 "the thousands of troops, the doctors, 463 00:30:08,040 --> 00:30:10,720 "runs wholly untouched and unaffected 464 00:30:10,720 --> 00:30:13,000 "the life of the people of the land. 465 00:30:13,000 --> 00:30:17,640 "A life as full of impossibilities and wonders as the Arabian nights. 466 00:30:17,640 --> 00:30:20,520 "Immediately outside of our own English life 467 00:30:20,520 --> 00:30:24,040 "is the dark and crooked and fantastic and wicked 468 00:30:24,040 --> 00:30:26,800 "and awe-inspiring life of the native. 469 00:30:26,800 --> 00:30:31,040 "To understand this dark India and conquer one's fear of it 470 00:30:31,040 --> 00:30:34,920 "meant putting one's prejudices to one side and reaching out." 471 00:30:55,560 --> 00:30:58,520 It wasn't just drugs that were enticing Kipling 472 00:30:58,520 --> 00:31:01,840 to a darker, more exciting side of Indian life. 473 00:31:01,840 --> 00:31:05,600 Here, in the Shahdara Gardens, prostitutes plied their trade 474 00:31:05,600 --> 00:31:07,840 amongst the tombs and in the shadows 475 00:31:07,840 --> 00:31:10,520 and the young Kipling, only 18 at the time, 476 00:31:10,520 --> 00:31:13,680 escaped the city in search of adventure and distraction. 477 00:31:19,280 --> 00:31:23,240 He is a teenager and his hormones are raging. 478 00:31:23,240 --> 00:31:26,240 And he's a very horny young man. 479 00:31:26,240 --> 00:31:27,720 And he wants to... 480 00:31:27,720 --> 00:31:31,160 You almost feel his hormones are dragging him into the city. 481 00:31:33,840 --> 00:31:37,240 We know this from a series of coded entries in his journals 482 00:31:37,240 --> 00:31:39,080 and letters to friends. 483 00:31:39,080 --> 00:31:42,840 21st of August, 1885, at the height of the heat, 484 00:31:42,840 --> 00:31:46,240 when most of the Anglo-Indians would have been away in Shimla, 485 00:31:46,240 --> 00:31:49,800 Kipling writes, "Usual philander in the gardens. 486 00:31:49,800 --> 00:31:52,520 "Home to count the risks of my resolution." 487 00:31:52,520 --> 00:31:56,000 Clearly worried about the after-effects of his encounter. 488 00:31:56,000 --> 00:31:59,400 Elsewhere, one of his codes - five initials. 489 00:31:59,400 --> 00:32:02,080 W-R-W-M-T. 490 00:32:02,080 --> 00:32:04,520 Whatever that meant or whoever that was, 491 00:32:04,520 --> 00:32:07,720 "A thoroughly satisfactory conclusion." 492 00:32:07,720 --> 00:32:10,400 In a letter to a friend at the same time, he writes, 493 00:32:10,400 --> 00:32:13,240 "I'm no more capable of abandoning my writing 494 00:32:13,240 --> 00:32:15,560 "than I can put aside the occasional woman, 495 00:32:15,560 --> 00:32:19,520 "which is good for health and the softening of ferocious manners. 496 00:32:19,520 --> 00:32:22,320 "It is my amusement and, like all amusements, 497 00:32:22,320 --> 00:32:24,600 "the nicer for being discouraged." 498 00:32:24,600 --> 00:32:28,080 Kipling may have enjoyed the elicit nature of his encounters, 499 00:32:28,080 --> 00:32:30,320 but it's clear the other men of the station 500 00:32:30,320 --> 00:32:33,520 knew of his wanderings in the Old City and they didn't approve, 501 00:32:33,520 --> 00:32:35,560 one of them saying at the time, 502 00:32:35,560 --> 00:32:39,840 "Everyone thought he was going for a mucker with the harlotries therein." 503 00:32:47,160 --> 00:32:51,040 There's no doubt at all that one of the ways that young Rudy Kipling 504 00:32:51,040 --> 00:32:55,640 learns about India is through the prostitutes of Lahore. 505 00:32:55,640 --> 00:32:57,640 The phrase that we all now use, 506 00:32:57,640 --> 00:33:00,920 "The oldest profession in the world", it comes from Kipling. 507 00:33:05,040 --> 00:33:07,280 When we talk about prostitutes in Lahore, 508 00:33:07,280 --> 00:33:10,120 we're talking about a very sophisticated group of women. 509 00:33:10,120 --> 00:33:12,160 They're more like the Geishas of Japan. 510 00:33:12,160 --> 00:33:15,520 They're there to entertain men and they entertain them with music 511 00:33:15,520 --> 00:33:17,600 and dancing, they have poetry, 512 00:33:17,600 --> 00:33:20,840 and young men would go to prostitutes and sit at their court 513 00:33:20,840 --> 00:33:23,320 and swap stories, they would smoke bhang 514 00:33:23,320 --> 00:33:27,600 and they would recite poetry to each other and listen to music. 515 00:33:27,600 --> 00:33:30,200 And young Kipling breaks into that circle 516 00:33:30,200 --> 00:33:33,640 and he writes with huge sympathy about these women. 517 00:33:37,880 --> 00:33:40,560 The girls in question would have been in these balconies? 518 00:33:40,560 --> 00:33:42,800 Yes, indeed. They were entertainers, Patrick, 519 00:33:42,800 --> 00:33:45,640 whose function was to both... 520 00:33:45,640 --> 00:33:48,520 for example, recite poetry or music. 521 00:33:48,520 --> 00:33:52,120 They were all talented as singers, as dancers. 522 00:33:52,120 --> 00:33:54,560 So, it was a wider range of services they offered 523 00:33:54,560 --> 00:33:56,840 than simply physical gratification. 524 00:33:56,840 --> 00:34:00,600 This feels, to me, a little sanitised now. 525 00:34:00,600 --> 00:34:02,120 It doesn't quite have the edge 526 00:34:02,120 --> 00:34:04,760 that a proper red-light district would have. 527 00:34:04,760 --> 00:34:08,560 Yes, well, red-light districts are not necessarily proper! Well, yes... 528 00:34:08,560 --> 00:34:11,040 On the assumption of being improper, 529 00:34:11,040 --> 00:34:13,680 when you think about it, Kipling's own writing... 530 00:34:13,680 --> 00:34:17,320 And don't forget, he was writing in the Victorian time, 531 00:34:17,320 --> 00:34:19,600 and, then, prudery was the mantra. 532 00:34:19,600 --> 00:34:23,840 There was an element of sanitisation in his writing, 533 00:34:23,840 --> 00:34:28,000 and so, it was quite understandable that whatever he said 534 00:34:28,000 --> 00:34:31,680 would have elliptical meanings and, inevitably, 535 00:34:31,680 --> 00:34:36,400 today, most of the people who are the denizens of this place 536 00:34:36,400 --> 00:34:38,040 use this as their offices. 537 00:34:38,040 --> 00:34:39,480 But they live elsewhere. 538 00:34:39,480 --> 00:34:44,160 But it's still striking that we've got the huge mosque right here, 539 00:34:44,160 --> 00:34:48,160 and then the red-light district on its lap. Yes, indeed. 540 00:34:48,160 --> 00:34:49,440 The court used to be here, 541 00:34:49,440 --> 00:34:51,600 and the residence, as well, on the other side. 542 00:34:51,600 --> 00:34:54,480 I think it was probably an element of temptation. 543 00:34:54,480 --> 00:34:56,920 If you could resist temptation, then why not? 544 00:34:59,760 --> 00:35:01,240 Do you think it was part of Lahore 545 00:35:01,240 --> 00:35:03,120 which made it easier for him to do that? 546 00:35:03,120 --> 00:35:05,720 Had he been somewhere like Bombay, there'd have been more 547 00:35:05,720 --> 00:35:07,720 of a temptation to stick with the English? 548 00:35:07,720 --> 00:35:10,960 Had he been in Bombay, he would have been much more circumscribed 549 00:35:10,960 --> 00:35:12,920 in his ability to move around the city. 550 00:35:12,920 --> 00:35:17,200 And, certainly, at the levels that he wanted to savour Lahore, 551 00:35:17,200 --> 00:35:19,880 the stories that he came up with in Lahore 552 00:35:19,880 --> 00:35:23,280 were obviously born of his own personal experience 553 00:35:23,280 --> 00:35:26,800 and born of his personal investigation 554 00:35:26,800 --> 00:35:31,480 into areas that young boys of that age, young men of that age, 555 00:35:31,480 --> 00:35:33,720 and, particularly, English boys, 556 00:35:33,720 --> 00:35:35,560 were not really exposed to. 557 00:35:35,560 --> 00:35:37,240 So, in a way, it was quite felicitous 558 00:35:37,240 --> 00:35:39,640 that not only did Kipling arrive here at this age 559 00:35:39,640 --> 00:35:41,680 where he was open to all these adventures, 560 00:35:41,680 --> 00:35:45,040 but Lahore was a city that was open to being adventured in. 561 00:35:45,040 --> 00:35:47,120 It was the perfect marriage for him. 562 00:35:47,120 --> 00:35:49,240 He was in the right place at the right time. 563 00:35:49,240 --> 00:35:53,000 And Lahore, one has to be honest, found its voice. 564 00:35:53,000 --> 00:35:56,040 MARKET BUSTLE 565 00:36:02,880 --> 00:36:05,800 Whilst Kipling enjoyed taking a walk on the wild side 566 00:36:05,800 --> 00:36:09,680 in the Walled City, when he came to write about similar transgressions, 567 00:36:09,680 --> 00:36:12,240 the results were invariably much darker. 568 00:36:13,720 --> 00:36:17,400 Beyond The Pale is a story of Trejago, an Englishman who, 569 00:36:17,400 --> 00:36:20,760 not unlike Kipling, knew too much and saw too much. 570 00:36:20,760 --> 00:36:23,400 Stumbling through the Walled City one night, 571 00:36:23,400 --> 00:36:26,320 Trejago finds himself in a dark alley, at a dead end, 572 00:36:26,320 --> 00:36:28,480 beguiled by a beautiful singing voice. 573 00:36:28,480 --> 00:36:32,520 The voice turns out to belong to Bisesa, a widow of only 15, 574 00:36:32,520 --> 00:36:36,600 with whom Trejago begins an extraordinary love affair. 575 00:36:36,600 --> 00:36:39,920 "That night was the beginning of many strange things, 576 00:36:39,920 --> 00:36:42,000 "and of a double life so wild 577 00:36:42,000 --> 00:36:45,280 "that Trejago today sometimes wonders if it were not all a dream." 578 00:36:47,640 --> 00:36:51,400 Trejago returns to the Walled City for the fifth time in three weeks, 579 00:36:51,400 --> 00:36:53,520 desperate for a sign from his lover. 580 00:36:53,520 --> 00:36:56,080 Finding himself underneath the same grating 581 00:36:56,080 --> 00:36:58,800 from which he first heard her beautiful singing, 582 00:36:58,800 --> 00:37:00,960 he shouts, and is answered. 583 00:37:00,960 --> 00:37:04,120 To his horror, two arms are thrust through the grating - 584 00:37:04,120 --> 00:37:07,360 hands cut off, revealing bloody stumps. 585 00:37:07,360 --> 00:37:11,240 As he recoils, a spear is thrust at him, missing him by a fraction, 586 00:37:11,240 --> 00:37:13,280 but wounding him in the groin. 587 00:37:13,280 --> 00:37:17,360 Trejago limps off into the night, cursing his lost love. 588 00:37:18,640 --> 00:37:21,760 In Kipling's world, despite his own adventures, 589 00:37:21,760 --> 00:37:25,360 it invariably ends in tragedy when his characters cross the limits 590 00:37:25,360 --> 00:37:28,000 of what he knowingly refers to as "decent society". 591 00:37:34,000 --> 00:37:36,200 This young man has broken a taboo. 592 00:37:36,200 --> 00:37:39,960 He has fallen in love with a native woman from the red-light district 593 00:37:39,960 --> 00:37:41,760 and it's going to end in tragedy. 594 00:37:41,760 --> 00:37:44,200 And these stories nearly always do end in tragedy. 595 00:37:44,200 --> 00:37:47,080 But, this is the first man to write about this. 596 00:37:47,080 --> 00:37:51,160 Here is a European writing about love across the racial divide. 597 00:37:52,840 --> 00:37:56,680 Characters like Trejago are no longer the hopeful young men 598 00:37:56,680 --> 00:37:59,680 arriving from England to make their fortune. 599 00:37:59,680 --> 00:38:01,360 India has changed them, 600 00:38:01,360 --> 00:38:03,680 just as it was changing Kipling. 601 00:38:03,680 --> 00:38:05,840 He was starting to see the contradictions 602 00:38:05,840 --> 00:38:07,680 and the tragedies of the Raj. 603 00:38:12,280 --> 00:38:14,200 Then, in 1885, 604 00:38:14,200 --> 00:38:17,640 just as Kipling was starting to find his subject in Lahore, 605 00:38:17,640 --> 00:38:20,680 he was diverted and given an opportunity 606 00:38:20,680 --> 00:38:23,880 to observe Anglo-Indian high society up close. 607 00:38:23,880 --> 00:38:27,200 He was sent by the Gazette to be the special correspondent 608 00:38:27,200 --> 00:38:30,840 for the summer season at the hill town of Shimla. 609 00:38:30,840 --> 00:38:33,880 The posting would allow him to get under the skin of the ruling elite 610 00:38:33,880 --> 00:38:37,760 and explore a world that was as strange as that of the Walled City. 611 00:38:37,760 --> 00:38:42,280 It would offer a new direction for him as a writer of short stories. 612 00:38:46,320 --> 00:38:49,080 Kipling would take the train from Lahore to Ambala, 613 00:38:49,080 --> 00:38:53,200 and then a horse and cart up the steep mountain road to Shimla. 614 00:38:53,200 --> 00:38:56,440 Sadly, these days, you can't take the train from Pakistan to India. 615 00:38:56,440 --> 00:38:59,840 I've had to come across the land border crossing at Wagah. 616 00:38:59,840 --> 00:39:02,560 I'm coming up on the lush foothills of the Himalayas now. 617 00:39:02,560 --> 00:39:05,000 It must have been an incredibly welcome sight to Kipling 618 00:39:05,000 --> 00:39:07,600 and the other Europeans escaping the dusty plains 619 00:39:07,600 --> 00:39:09,840 and looking forward to getting up out of the heat. 620 00:39:09,840 --> 00:39:12,240 In 1903, they finally built a railway up to Shimla. 621 00:39:12,240 --> 00:39:13,920 I'm going to take the train 622 00:39:13,920 --> 00:39:16,920 rather than take my chances with a horse and cart. 623 00:39:21,200 --> 00:39:24,480 Perched 7,000 feet up in the Himalayas, 624 00:39:24,480 --> 00:39:27,440 Shimla was the summer capital of the British Raj. 625 00:39:27,440 --> 00:39:30,400 And every spring, hundreds of civil servants, clerks 626 00:39:30,400 --> 00:39:34,840 and administrators made the 1,200-mile journey from Calcutta 627 00:39:34,840 --> 00:39:37,640 to rule India in a more temperate climate. 628 00:39:41,320 --> 00:39:45,720 One viceroy regarded this mountain retreat as a preposterous place. 629 00:39:45,720 --> 00:39:49,560 "That the capital of the Indian Empire should be thus hanging 630 00:39:49,560 --> 00:39:52,800 "on by its eyelids to the side of a hill is too absurd." 631 00:39:54,960 --> 00:39:59,080 Shimla was an exclusive world of expensive guest houses and hotels. 632 00:39:59,080 --> 00:40:00,880 Like all the hill stations, 633 00:40:00,880 --> 00:40:03,880 it was designed to be an oasis of Englishness - 634 00:40:03,880 --> 00:40:06,560 with Home County-style architecture, 635 00:40:06,560 --> 00:40:08,320 rose gardens, picnics, 636 00:40:08,320 --> 00:40:10,600 lawn tennis and croquet. 637 00:40:12,600 --> 00:40:15,800 Shimla was probably the most English town in India. 638 00:40:15,800 --> 00:40:17,880 All the houses were sort of... 639 00:40:17,880 --> 00:40:20,320 I can best describe them as "Tudorbethan", 640 00:40:20,320 --> 00:40:22,760 although they did have corrugated iron roofs. 641 00:40:22,760 --> 00:40:26,200 The flowers in the garden were English flowers - 642 00:40:26,200 --> 00:40:28,560 irises, sweet peas, roses. 643 00:40:28,560 --> 00:40:31,920 There was afternoon tea, log fires when you first went there. 644 00:40:31,920 --> 00:40:34,840 Everything was as English as it could be. 645 00:40:34,840 --> 00:40:37,000 And the cathedral was English-looking. 646 00:40:37,000 --> 00:40:39,240 People quite often got married there. 647 00:40:41,080 --> 00:40:45,080 Unlike Lahore, with its small, stuffy world of 70 administrators, 648 00:40:45,080 --> 00:40:46,960 this was a bustling playground 649 00:40:46,960 --> 00:40:49,040 for the cream of Anglo-Indian society. 650 00:40:50,160 --> 00:40:52,600 It was the court, wasn't it? 651 00:40:52,600 --> 00:40:54,600 Where deals were done 652 00:40:54,600 --> 00:40:57,960 and where there was an enormous amount of the kind of life 653 00:40:57,960 --> 00:40:59,760 that you do have in a court. 654 00:40:59,760 --> 00:41:02,080 Balls, for example. 655 00:41:02,080 --> 00:41:05,560 Balls and parties, and... 656 00:41:05,560 --> 00:41:07,680 people paying visits on each other 657 00:41:07,680 --> 00:41:11,920 and it being important who comes and visits you and who doesn't. 658 00:41:11,920 --> 00:41:15,000 And, really, the top of the tree is if you can be intimate 659 00:41:15,000 --> 00:41:18,440 with the Viceroy, the Queen's representative, and her family, 660 00:41:18,440 --> 00:41:21,000 which Kipling's parents were, of course. 661 00:41:21,000 --> 00:41:23,440 MILITARY BAND PLAYS 662 00:41:32,040 --> 00:41:34,680 'Raaja Bhasin is a writer and historian 663 00:41:34,680 --> 00:41:37,680 'who is an expert on the British in Shimla during the Raj.' 664 00:41:39,320 --> 00:41:42,160 What was this place like in Kipling's day? 665 00:41:42,160 --> 00:41:45,600 For one, the number of people would have been perhaps 666 00:41:45,600 --> 00:41:48,480 a 50th of what there are there now. 667 00:41:48,480 --> 00:41:50,720 What would that have been in the 1880s? 668 00:41:50,720 --> 00:41:54,360 Maybe about 20,000 people and, of that, 669 00:41:54,360 --> 00:41:56,920 maybe 3,000 or 4,000 Europeans, 670 00:41:56,920 --> 00:41:58,800 and the rest Indians. 671 00:42:08,000 --> 00:42:10,440 And this would have been the main thoroughfare 672 00:42:10,440 --> 00:42:12,640 for the British in Kipling's day. Yes. 673 00:42:12,640 --> 00:42:15,800 This is where they rode up and down? Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. 674 00:42:15,800 --> 00:42:19,360 The Anglo-Indians who couldn't make it to Shimla in the season 675 00:42:19,360 --> 00:42:21,760 were dying to know what was happening there 676 00:42:21,760 --> 00:42:23,800 and Kipling sent regular reports 677 00:42:23,800 --> 00:42:26,560 on the festivities to the Civil and Military Gazette. 678 00:42:28,520 --> 00:42:32,360 "This week's list of amusements includes the usual Monday 'pop', 679 00:42:32,360 --> 00:42:36,200 "a dance at Government House on Wednesday, two nights' theatricals, 680 00:42:36,200 --> 00:42:39,680 "a variety entertainment at the Gaiety Theatre this afternoon, 681 00:42:39,680 --> 00:42:42,280 "and the Trade Ball at Benmore tonight." 682 00:42:46,560 --> 00:42:50,160 Amateur theatricals were a high point of the Shimla season. 683 00:42:50,160 --> 00:42:51,840 And here at the Gaiety Theatre, 684 00:42:51,840 --> 00:42:55,640 Kipling appeared in a French farce called A Scrap Of Paper. 685 00:42:55,640 --> 00:43:00,360 Though, one observer described his performance as "horrid and vulgar". 686 00:43:00,360 --> 00:43:03,240 I'm sure you do, as far as I'm concerned... 687 00:43:03,240 --> 00:43:07,480 'Today, the theatre still performs every other play in English.' 688 00:43:07,480 --> 00:43:10,440 Out of my way, you bedding-department gigolo! 689 00:43:10,440 --> 00:43:13,720 Squirrel, squirrel! Look what you've done to my squirrel! 690 00:43:13,720 --> 00:43:15,400 Get out before I call the manager! 691 00:43:19,480 --> 00:43:22,040 Amateur dramatics played an important role 692 00:43:22,040 --> 00:43:26,040 in British-Indian life beyond just giving vent to the frustrated and, 693 00:43:26,040 --> 00:43:29,840 no doubt, misplaced theatrical ambitions of the bored wives. 694 00:43:29,840 --> 00:43:33,520 Kipling enjoyed acting because it allowed him to get close to women. 695 00:43:33,520 --> 00:43:37,160 Theatre, whether it was putting on a play in an officers' mess, 696 00:43:37,160 --> 00:43:40,000 or in a purpose-built venue, like this one in Shimla, 697 00:43:40,000 --> 00:43:42,560 was really one of the only chances within the confines 698 00:43:42,560 --> 00:43:46,080 of the Victorian society that the British imposed here 699 00:43:46,080 --> 00:43:48,840 where men and women could get close for flirting and romance. 700 00:43:48,840 --> 00:43:51,920 After his first stay in Shimla, Kipling writes... 701 00:43:53,040 --> 00:43:56,880 "The month was a round of picnics, dances and theatricals and so on. 702 00:43:56,880 --> 00:44:00,480 "And I flirted with the bottled-up energy of a year on my lips." 703 00:44:02,800 --> 00:44:05,040 While Shimla had the outward appearance 704 00:44:05,040 --> 00:44:07,040 of English respectability, 705 00:44:07,040 --> 00:44:11,080 in fact, it was a hotbed of intrigue and scandal. 706 00:44:11,080 --> 00:44:13,240 The town was a celebrated destination 707 00:44:13,240 --> 00:44:17,160 for the "fishing fleet" - girls who had travelled from Britain 708 00:44:17,160 --> 00:44:18,800 on the lookout for husbands, 709 00:44:18,800 --> 00:44:22,440 and for its "grass widows" - wives who could misbehave 710 00:44:22,440 --> 00:44:24,880 while their husbands worked down on the plains. 711 00:44:26,040 --> 00:44:29,360 Shimla was really full of grass widows. 712 00:44:29,360 --> 00:44:33,040 Because, anybody who could afford it sent their wife and children, 713 00:44:33,040 --> 00:44:35,880 they sent them up to the hills so they didn't have to suffer 714 00:44:35,880 --> 00:44:38,720 the horrible hot weather on the plains. 715 00:44:38,720 --> 00:44:42,520 And most people were between about 25 and 45 716 00:44:42,520 --> 00:44:44,360 and when they went up to Shimla, 717 00:44:44,360 --> 00:44:46,440 there were these attractive young women, 718 00:44:46,440 --> 00:44:49,440 there were the officers who were coming up on leave, 719 00:44:49,440 --> 00:44:51,480 they'd come up on three weeks' leave, 720 00:44:51,480 --> 00:44:53,120 and there they were in this town 721 00:44:53,120 --> 00:44:56,360 with loads of proximity and husbands not there. You can imagine! 722 00:44:56,360 --> 00:44:59,120 Lady Reading once described as Shimla as a place 723 00:44:59,120 --> 00:45:01,800 where "every Jack has someone else's Jill." 724 00:45:21,760 --> 00:45:25,840 The young, unmarried, white, junior members of the administration 725 00:45:25,840 --> 00:45:29,280 and the military could go and do what is called "poodle-faking" - 726 00:45:29,280 --> 00:45:31,960 which was to make love to the married wives 727 00:45:31,960 --> 00:45:33,920 now their husbands are in the plains. 728 00:45:33,920 --> 00:45:35,680 He had this great phase, 729 00:45:35,680 --> 00:45:39,040 "duty and red tape" - that's life down on the plains. 730 00:45:39,040 --> 00:45:42,080 "Picnics and adultery" - that's life up in the hills. 731 00:45:42,080 --> 00:45:44,520 And there's a huge contrast. 732 00:45:44,520 --> 00:45:47,320 Standards start to slip when you're up in the hills. 733 00:45:47,320 --> 00:45:48,720 You can get away with it. 734 00:45:48,720 --> 00:45:51,000 And Kipling sees it as paradise. 735 00:45:51,000 --> 00:45:53,080 He says, "This is like Elysium. 736 00:45:53,080 --> 00:45:56,120 "This is where the gods live. Everything goes here." 737 00:45:56,120 --> 00:45:58,160 # I am the very model of a modern Major-General 738 00:45:58,160 --> 00:46:00,680 # I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral... # 739 00:46:00,680 --> 00:46:03,680 Kipling was able to rub shoulders with the power elite 740 00:46:03,680 --> 00:46:05,800 of British India at work and at play, 741 00:46:05,800 --> 00:46:08,680 and the pretensions and the foibles of their world 742 00:46:08,680 --> 00:46:11,080 would provide fertile material for his fiction. 743 00:46:13,960 --> 00:46:16,200 At first, he was intoxicated by it, 744 00:46:16,200 --> 00:46:20,120 describing it as a place of "glamour, wine and witchery". 745 00:46:24,560 --> 00:46:27,160 The Mall was the place to be seen. And every afternoon, 746 00:46:27,160 --> 00:46:30,240 Kipling would promenade here with the other Anglo-Indians, 747 00:46:30,240 --> 00:46:33,240 picking up political and social gossip for the newspaper. 748 00:46:35,440 --> 00:46:37,920 This is where 749 00:46:37,920 --> 00:46:40,040 the world and its dog 750 00:46:40,040 --> 00:46:43,240 came to "eat the air", "hawakhana". 751 00:46:43,240 --> 00:46:45,360 Hawakhana, eating the air. Eating the air. 752 00:46:45,360 --> 00:46:48,960 And that was their promenade. Clean, fresh air. 753 00:46:50,320 --> 00:46:52,760 Throw in a few flirtations for good measure, 754 00:46:52,760 --> 00:46:54,560 it would make a good promenade. 755 00:46:55,760 --> 00:46:58,640 There was even a part of town known as Scandal Point. 756 00:47:00,280 --> 00:47:03,880 So, this was the central hub of gossip for the whole of Shimla? 757 00:47:03,880 --> 00:47:06,960 Absolutely. This is where all the townspeople gathered, 758 00:47:06,960 --> 00:47:08,320 especially the women, 759 00:47:08,320 --> 00:47:11,880 with a traffic jam of rickshaws all crowding this place, 760 00:47:11,880 --> 00:47:13,360 exchanging scandal. 761 00:47:13,360 --> 00:47:17,120 And all these elegantly dressed middle-aged ladies 762 00:47:17,120 --> 00:47:20,200 trying to figure out who was going to run off with whom, 763 00:47:20,200 --> 00:47:22,480 who would like to run off with whom. 764 00:47:22,480 --> 00:47:24,680 And the way Kipling presents it, 765 00:47:24,680 --> 00:47:27,920 it's not the conception of Victorian society that we have. 766 00:47:27,920 --> 00:47:31,480 I mean, there was a lot of sexual intrigue. 767 00:47:31,480 --> 00:47:36,080 It seems much more free than we would imagine these days. 768 00:47:36,080 --> 00:47:38,280 It most certainly was. 769 00:47:38,280 --> 00:47:41,920 If anything, Shimla was a steamy place. 770 00:47:52,880 --> 00:47:55,520 But, after three months of what he called 771 00:47:55,520 --> 00:47:57,160 "the gay season in the hills", 772 00:47:57,160 --> 00:47:59,600 Kipling was beginning to see through it. 773 00:47:59,600 --> 00:48:02,240 Always more comfortable as an outsider, 774 00:48:02,240 --> 00:48:06,680 he was now turning what he saw into biting, satirical short stories. 775 00:48:11,400 --> 00:48:14,200 Shimla is the place where people let their hair down, 776 00:48:14,200 --> 00:48:16,480 but even Rudy Kipling realises 777 00:48:16,480 --> 00:48:19,560 that, actually, it's a kind of false society. 778 00:48:19,560 --> 00:48:21,280 It's not really genuine. 779 00:48:21,280 --> 00:48:23,560 And he very quickly gets jaded by it. 780 00:48:23,560 --> 00:48:25,800 And it's very fascinating - here's a youngster, 781 00:48:25,800 --> 00:48:28,200 thought this was going to be paradise, 782 00:48:28,200 --> 00:48:30,280 but he very quickly turns his pen. 783 00:48:30,280 --> 00:48:32,520 His pen becomes very waspish, 784 00:48:32,520 --> 00:48:36,560 and he starts to criticise this society more and more, to the extent 785 00:48:36,560 --> 00:48:40,280 that the stories he writes about Shimla society are really... 786 00:48:40,280 --> 00:48:42,880 They're letting the side down terribly. 787 00:48:42,880 --> 00:48:45,720 "There was a Commissioner in Shimla, in those days. 788 00:48:45,720 --> 00:48:49,760 "An ugly man. The ugliest man in Asia, with two exceptions. 789 00:48:49,760 --> 00:48:52,040 "His name was Saggott. Barr-Saggott. 790 00:48:52,040 --> 00:48:55,160 "Anthony Barr-Saggott and six letters to follow. 791 00:48:55,160 --> 00:48:57,680 "Departmentally, he was one of the best men 792 00:48:57,680 --> 00:48:59,240 "the Government of India owned. 793 00:48:59,240 --> 00:49:02,600 "Socially, he was like unto a blandishing gorilla." 794 00:49:02,600 --> 00:49:07,240 "Mrs Hauksbee was clever, witty, brilliant 795 00:49:07,240 --> 00:49:10,240 "and sparkling beyond most of her kind, 796 00:49:10,240 --> 00:49:13,640 "but possessed of many devils of malice and mischievousness. 797 00:49:13,640 --> 00:49:16,160 "She could be nice, though, even to her own sex. 798 00:49:16,160 --> 00:49:18,040 "But that is another story." 799 00:49:18,040 --> 00:49:22,680 These are very thinly veiled portraits of quite important people. 800 00:49:22,680 --> 00:49:25,880 He must've had balls to write as he did about them. Of steel. 801 00:49:25,880 --> 00:49:28,560 All of Kipling's little stories are true. 802 00:49:28,560 --> 00:49:31,840 And I think here it again comes to Kipling as a writer - 803 00:49:31,840 --> 00:49:36,920 his ability to sort of take off from real-life situations. 804 00:49:36,920 --> 00:49:40,920 Shimla is perhaps a perfect case in point where he was able to do that. 805 00:49:43,000 --> 00:49:46,040 Kipling's disillusionment with Shimla comes through 806 00:49:46,040 --> 00:49:48,520 in many of the satirical short stories of life there 807 00:49:48,520 --> 00:49:52,160 during the summer season, and they're different in style 808 00:49:52,160 --> 00:49:54,720 to the other stories he was writing at the time. 809 00:49:57,040 --> 00:50:00,080 What I think I've understood more clearly since coming out here 810 00:50:00,080 --> 00:50:03,120 is that Kipling's real genius was in getting close to his subject. 811 00:50:03,120 --> 00:50:05,760 Perhaps that was because of his grounding as a journalist. 812 00:50:05,760 --> 00:50:07,560 He writes the common soldier so well 813 00:50:07,560 --> 00:50:11,040 because he's spent these long hours chatting, drinking beer 814 00:50:11,040 --> 00:50:13,360 with the soldiers stationed in Lahore. 815 00:50:13,360 --> 00:50:15,240 He writes the Walled City well 816 00:50:15,240 --> 00:50:18,360 because he was one of the few Europeans who really explored it. 817 00:50:18,360 --> 00:50:21,000 And he's able to portray - with a slightly acid tongue - 818 00:50:21,000 --> 00:50:23,800 the British in Shimla because he was part of that society. 819 00:50:39,680 --> 00:50:41,760 Many of Kipling's stories were published 820 00:50:41,760 --> 00:50:44,960 alongside his journalism in the Civil and Military Gazette. 821 00:50:46,280 --> 00:50:49,200 But it wasn't until 1887, when he was 21, 822 00:50:49,200 --> 00:50:51,320 that he started grouping them 823 00:50:51,320 --> 00:50:55,440 with new and more ambitious pieces into a single book. 824 00:50:56,680 --> 00:51:00,400 Its title - Plain Tales From The Hills - was apposite. 825 00:51:00,400 --> 00:51:04,240 These were deceptively simple stories that aimed to tell readers 826 00:51:04,240 --> 00:51:06,520 about life in Anglo-India as it really was. 827 00:51:14,200 --> 00:51:16,960 Kipling liked to head out of town on horseback, 828 00:51:16,960 --> 00:51:19,680 visit the rural villages and see the real India. 829 00:51:19,680 --> 00:51:22,840 One such trip gave him the idea for the short story Lispeth, 830 00:51:22,840 --> 00:51:25,560 in which a young Englishman falls from his horse 831 00:51:25,560 --> 00:51:27,760 and is rescued by a beautiful hill girl. 832 00:51:29,000 --> 00:51:31,000 "When a hill girl grows lovely, 833 00:51:31,000 --> 00:51:34,280 "she is worth travelling 50 miles over bad ground to look upon. 834 00:51:35,680 --> 00:51:37,360 "Lispeth had a Greek face, 835 00:51:37,360 --> 00:51:41,880 "one of those faces people paint so often and see so seldom." 836 00:51:45,720 --> 00:51:48,240 The hill girl, a convert to Christianity, 837 00:51:48,240 --> 00:51:50,480 falls passionately in love with the Englishman 838 00:51:50,480 --> 00:51:52,480 and declares her intention to marry him - 839 00:51:52,480 --> 00:51:55,480 much to the horror of the missionaries who raised her. 840 00:51:57,240 --> 00:52:01,120 The betrayal of Lispeth is treated sympathetically by Kipling 841 00:52:01,120 --> 00:52:03,560 and the English are portrayed as untrustworthy. 842 00:52:04,520 --> 00:52:08,080 Contrary to the received idea of Kipling as the bigoted Victorian, 843 00:52:08,080 --> 00:52:11,080 here it is the West that lets down the East. 844 00:52:20,320 --> 00:52:22,320 Only eight pages long, 845 00:52:22,320 --> 00:52:25,800 Lispeth is a story that retains its power to unsettle. 846 00:52:25,800 --> 00:52:29,360 It was a provocative opening to his first book. 847 00:52:29,360 --> 00:52:32,320 Grouped together, the stories that follow 848 00:52:32,320 --> 00:52:34,840 of adultery, loneliness and betrayal 849 00:52:34,840 --> 00:52:37,960 did not add up to a flattering portrait of the Raj. 850 00:52:41,640 --> 00:52:44,200 I don't think people knew what they were getting. 851 00:52:44,200 --> 00:52:46,000 In India, they were shocked by what he said. 852 00:52:46,000 --> 00:52:48,440 There was a sense that he'd let the side down, 853 00:52:48,440 --> 00:52:50,480 that he shouldn't have published the stories. 854 00:52:50,480 --> 00:52:52,040 The Viceroy was telling Mrs Kipling, 855 00:52:52,040 --> 00:52:54,840 "Oh, you really shouldn't have let your son do these stories." 856 00:52:54,840 --> 00:52:58,000 And I think people were very startled when that book came out 857 00:52:58,000 --> 00:53:00,880 because they WERE so subversive, they WERE so cynical. 858 00:53:02,920 --> 00:53:06,360 In describing the realities of Anglo-Indian experience, 859 00:53:06,360 --> 00:53:09,960 in writing Plain Tales From The Hills, nothing was taboo. 860 00:53:11,600 --> 00:53:14,840 Kipling knew that some who came to find a new life in India 861 00:53:14,840 --> 00:53:17,080 found despair instead. 862 00:53:17,080 --> 00:53:20,320 Suicides were not uncommon, but always covered up. 863 00:53:26,840 --> 00:53:30,480 In Thrown Away, a young soldier, new to India, 864 00:53:30,480 --> 00:53:34,160 fails to cope because he doesn't seem to understand that India 865 00:53:34,160 --> 00:53:37,040 is a country where you shouldn't take anything too seriously. 866 00:53:40,360 --> 00:53:42,480 After he blows his brains out, 867 00:53:42,480 --> 00:53:45,080 his senior officer has to bury the body, 868 00:53:45,080 --> 00:53:46,960 covering up the evidence, 869 00:53:46,960 --> 00:53:49,840 and pretending to his family back home that he had died of cholera. 870 00:53:52,000 --> 00:53:54,840 Kipling knew all about what happened to people when they were young 871 00:53:54,840 --> 00:53:56,600 and new to the country. 872 00:53:56,600 --> 00:54:00,480 To survive, he seems to be saying you had to live by a new moral code. 873 00:54:00,480 --> 00:54:03,440 The real India was unfamiliar and threatening - 874 00:54:03,440 --> 00:54:06,040 not that the fools back home understood that. 875 00:54:06,040 --> 00:54:09,720 They were fed made-up stories of honour and bravery. 876 00:54:09,720 --> 00:54:12,120 Thrown Away is one of the few Plain Tales From The Hills 877 00:54:12,120 --> 00:54:14,680 that was never published in the Civil and Military Gazette, 878 00:54:14,680 --> 00:54:16,960 and it marks an important change. 879 00:54:16,960 --> 00:54:20,080 This dark, brilliant story proving Kipling so different 880 00:54:20,080 --> 00:54:22,640 from the reactionary he's made out to be, was written 881 00:54:22,640 --> 00:54:24,120 not just for the Anglo-Indians, 882 00:54:24,120 --> 00:54:26,720 but the armchair imperialists back in Britain. 883 00:54:32,880 --> 00:54:36,440 Plain Tales didn't make Kipling popular with the British in India 884 00:54:36,440 --> 00:54:38,560 and, as word about the new stories spread, 885 00:54:38,560 --> 00:54:41,600 and he grew less respectful towards his hosts, 886 00:54:41,600 --> 00:54:43,800 his Indian education was coming to an end. 887 00:54:49,840 --> 00:54:53,000 His proprietor, George Allen, starts to get pretty worried, 888 00:54:53,000 --> 00:54:56,120 to the extent that, eventually, Kipling is too hot to handle. 889 00:54:56,120 --> 00:54:58,600 He's being so rude about people like the Viceroy, 890 00:54:58,600 --> 00:55:00,280 the commander-in-chief, 891 00:55:00,280 --> 00:55:01,960 British society in general, 892 00:55:01,960 --> 00:55:03,840 that Allen basically says to him, 893 00:55:03,840 --> 00:55:06,880 "Look, young Kipling, I think it's time you went to England. 894 00:55:06,880 --> 00:55:08,160 "We can't handle you here." 895 00:55:09,840 --> 00:55:12,440 Seven years after he had first arrived, 896 00:55:12,440 --> 00:55:14,280 Kipling went back to Lahore 897 00:55:14,280 --> 00:55:15,920 to say goodbye to his family 898 00:55:15,920 --> 00:55:18,240 and to reflect on an extraordinary seven years. 899 00:55:22,200 --> 00:55:25,560 "I've had a good time. I've tasted success and the beauty of money. 900 00:55:25,560 --> 00:55:27,720 "I've mixed with fighters and statesman, 901 00:55:27,720 --> 00:55:30,280 "administrators and women who control them. 902 00:55:30,280 --> 00:55:32,960 "It was vivid and lively, and gloomy and savage. 903 00:55:32,960 --> 00:55:36,840 "I tried to get to know folk from the barrack room and the brothel, 904 00:55:36,840 --> 00:55:39,120 "to the ballroom and the Viceroy's council. 905 00:55:39,120 --> 00:55:42,000 "And I have, in a little measure, succeeded. 906 00:55:42,000 --> 00:55:45,000 "My training has been extensive and peculiar. 907 00:55:45,000 --> 00:55:47,720 "And now, I'm going to come home to see how it will work." 908 00:55:56,560 --> 00:55:59,600 Kipling left Lahore on 3rd March, 1889. 909 00:55:59,600 --> 00:56:02,200 Destined for fame and fortune, 910 00:56:02,200 --> 00:56:04,880 his reputation would wane with the Empire 911 00:56:04,880 --> 00:56:07,920 and his politics would alienate later generations. 912 00:56:07,920 --> 00:56:10,560 But it was the stories that grew out of his experiences here 913 00:56:10,560 --> 00:56:13,360 in Lahore, and in the foot hills of the Himalayas in Shimla, 914 00:56:13,360 --> 00:56:15,880 which remain his masterworks - 915 00:56:15,880 --> 00:56:18,280 works which are far more modern and complex, 916 00:56:18,280 --> 00:56:21,040 and far more sympathetic to the layers of Indian life, 917 00:56:21,040 --> 00:56:23,200 than Kipling is usually given credit for. 918 00:56:25,000 --> 00:56:26,880 Arriving back home in October, 919 00:56:26,880 --> 00:56:29,000 he found that Britain had changed, too. 920 00:56:30,880 --> 00:56:34,360 The Empire was more cherished and celebrated than ever. 921 00:56:34,360 --> 00:56:37,160 And the reading public were fascinated to find out 922 00:56:37,160 --> 00:56:40,400 what life was really like out in the colonies. 923 00:56:40,400 --> 00:56:43,800 Kipling found that his Plain Tales were a popular, 924 00:56:43,800 --> 00:56:45,520 as well as a critical, sensation. 925 00:56:45,520 --> 00:56:49,560 The eternal outsider had discovered a welcoming audience. 926 00:56:51,360 --> 00:56:55,040 People said, "Now we have somebody who will tell us about India." 927 00:56:55,040 --> 00:56:58,520 And there is Oscar Wilde's famous review that, 928 00:56:58,520 --> 00:57:01,360 when you're reading Plain Tales From The Hills, 929 00:57:01,360 --> 00:57:05,240 "one feels as if one were sitting under a palm-tree 930 00:57:05,240 --> 00:57:08,600 "reading by superb flashes of vulgarity." 931 00:57:08,600 --> 00:57:10,520 SHE CHUCKLES 932 00:57:10,520 --> 00:57:13,760 But Kipling was the "hottest thing". 933 00:57:13,760 --> 00:57:17,400 And Kipling was really the first "hottest thing" ever, 934 00:57:17,400 --> 00:57:21,560 because he arrived in London at a time when mass media 935 00:57:21,560 --> 00:57:24,720 were really beginning to be developed, 936 00:57:24,720 --> 00:57:28,520 and so he was the first writer to have a kind of global fame. 937 00:57:28,520 --> 00:57:32,000 And, I think, anything he wrote, he could publish. 938 00:57:32,000 --> 00:57:36,480 And publishers were just queueing up to publish his work. 939 00:57:36,480 --> 00:57:40,160 It was the boldness of his stories which shocked and enthralled 940 00:57:40,160 --> 00:57:43,160 his British readers and they couldn't get enough. 941 00:57:44,640 --> 00:57:47,760 Think of Lord Byron saying, "I was the comet of the season!" 942 00:57:47,760 --> 00:57:50,520 Rudyard Kipling is the comet of the season. 943 00:57:50,520 --> 00:57:54,160 He astonishes everybody because this is a new kind of realism 944 00:57:54,160 --> 00:57:56,160 that they haven't known in London 945 00:57:56,160 --> 00:57:58,280 and he really has an astonishing impact. 946 00:58:08,640 --> 00:58:12,640 No writer - not Shakespeare, not Dickens - 947 00:58:12,640 --> 00:58:15,680 has ever enjoyed such fame in their own lifetime. 948 00:58:18,280 --> 00:58:20,480 After a period in America, 949 00:58:20,480 --> 00:58:24,040 he was to live out his life here in the Sussex countryside. 950 00:58:25,840 --> 00:58:28,720 He became the literary lion of the Empire 951 00:58:28,720 --> 00:58:31,560 as the Empire itself fell into decline. 952 00:58:31,560 --> 00:58:33,360 And his fame has never waned. 953 00:58:35,440 --> 00:58:39,640 Kim, his story of an orphaned boy growing up on the streets of Lahore, 954 00:58:39,640 --> 00:58:43,360 would be his literary masterpiece and win him the Nobel Prize. 955 00:58:49,000 --> 00:58:53,080 But everything he achieved was founded on his teenage adventures 956 00:58:53,080 --> 00:58:56,320 as a cub reporter who broke all the rules, 957 00:58:56,320 --> 00:58:58,720 writing short stories that would change, for ever, 958 00:58:58,720 --> 00:59:00,520 the way India is imagined.