Kim's Game: The Great Game

I heard The Jungle Book and The Just So Stories as a sleepy-eyed child and, from time to time since, have come across snippets of Kipling’s writings, or the reminder of one, here and there. One hasty taxi ride across Lahore gave me a brief glance of Zam-Zammah; a dark-skinned child in red shorts, splashing in a stream, is Disney’s Mowgli; and a tiger-like cat is appropriately named Sher Khan.

Among the free downloads for Kindle, I found Kipling’s Kim, a book about which I had inevitably heard but, for whatever reason, never quite got around to reading. Two hours on buses and trains, the same again sat waiting around at Heathrow airport, and a nine hour flight from London to Bishkek provided an ideal opportunity to absorb myself in attempted murders and intrigue, spiritual quests and shape-changing in the heart of British India.

Before I talk about the Great Game, one of the book’s central themes, I want to touch upon the lesser game to which Kim gave his name. It has never occurred to me until yesterday that the Kim’s Game beloved of elderly relatives, scout masters and parents desperately trying to quieten children might have its origins in classic literature.  Whilst staying in Shimla during his holiday from St. Xavier’s, the shop owner turned spy teaches Kim to observe the tiniest details of a tray of precious stones, and then of household things. Kim’s rival in Shimla, a 10-year old Hindu boy, has mastered the game to such an extent that he can make his mental list blindfolded, relying solely on his touch, and still recall in detail everything on the tray when it is then hidden beneath the cloth.

Although this seems quite literally to be child’s play, the shop keeper is in fact training his protégées early in the observational skills and ability to accurately recall information required for a future successful career in espionage. Kim is, as far as the senior spies are concerned, perfect material for one following in their footsteps on account of his fluency in vernacular languages and the ease with which he understands and can engage in local cultures. Indian bureaucrats who spoke, lived and dressed as per their western counterparts are often referred to as brown sahibs; in Kim’s case it is entirely the opposite: he is a white native who, as and when required, can even darken his skin to enable seamless integration with the local population.

Having spent the past three years physically traipsing what I’ve always assumed to be the core battlegrounds of the Great Game – Central Asia, Afghanistan, northern Pakistan and western China – I was fascinated to see in Kim that the game’s reach spread far further than I ever thought: not only are Kim and his acquaintances embroiled in events in Shimla and the Himalayan foothills, but also in Lahore, Delhi and Banaras and, on one occasion, well in to the south of India. Quite what interest the Russians had so many thousand miles further south from the warm water ports they desired I am unsure, but clearly their presence was felt.

The guises the spies, both Russian and British, take on throughout the novel are both intriguing and charming. Those easiest to spot are the cartographers, surveyors and anthropologists who range across the Subcontinent observing, scientifically measuring and recording everything in minute detail. It is telling that more than one of the characters longs for a fellowship at the Royal Society: the scientific methodology and rigorous information gathering, not the cultural content of what they are examining, is their real interest.  It is their supposedly higher scientific or cultural purpose that gives these men the freedom to travel and collect information unchallenged by the population at large: in that respect they are little different from the numerous ‘cultural attaches’ employed by foreign embassies across Central Asia today.

Rather more subtle and, with the exception of Kim, an option really open only to native spies is to travel the roads as a wandering holy man, dispensing charms and spiritual advice in exchange for alms and lodging. The Russians are completely oblivious to the true identity of Kim when he is dressed in Tibetan garb and travelling in the company of his Lama; likewise, the Mahrattan is able to slip through the police’s grasp at Delhi railway station once Kim has transformed his appearance with ash and caste marks.

Disappearing amongst India’s vast ascetic community was certainly not a strategy pioneered by Great Game spies, but it appears to have served them well. For centuries and, indeed, to the present day, it is not uncommon to find convicts and other outcasts passing themselves off as mendicants. Not only will people not question the identity of holy man but, more often than not, they will feed and water him, give him money and somewhere to rest his head. To do otherwise would harm one’s karma, and the curses of a holy man are to be feared. 

Kim is very much on the edge of the Great Game: although he is earmarked for future missions, he is throughout the course of the book only a messenger boy and a chance participant in events. The information he gathers is undoubtedly valuable but, particularly in the early stages, he is unaware of the game in which he plays, assuming innocently that the message about the white stallion must in fact relate to a woman. It makes me question how many of the Great Game’s players were spies by profession (or deliberately pursued a career that could be run in parallel with espionage) and how many people simply collected and passed on information as an when it was profitable to do so. I think probably that the majority of informants fell into the latter category.

Kim gives insight into various sides of Indian life in the 19^th century, in this case all tied together by their connection with Kim himself. The fine and oft crossed lines between military and politics, religion and social authority are so blurred that Kim seems to breeze from one to the next effortlessly, to the point it seems they are but multiple facets of the same thing.  No one of these things takes absolute precedence, save perhaps one’s personal quest, spiritual or otherwise, but even that can be temporarily laid to one side in pursuit of a little information, a silver coin, and a hearty good meal. 

Digital publishing: The deathnell for books?

Author Bijan Omrani once told me that you should buy books as if you were an immortal, and, looking around the living room (not to mention the bedroom, the bathroom, the kitchen and every other room in the flat with available wall space), it certainly looks as though we've taken this advice to heart. There is a distinct pleasure to the tangibility of books, and their presence is reassuring.

Even in my book-loving world, however, the hallowed status of books is not-so-gently being challenged. The digital revolution steals onwards with stealth and speed, culminating in the last fortnight with a selection of events and comments that have made me think hard about where publishing is actually going.

• I went home to visit my parents for the weekend and, before lunch, sat out on the patio reading. My mother, a former leading literacy teacher, book club member and avid reader, was glued to her Kindle, my brother was devouring Frankenstein (Frankenstein) on his Ipad, and I was speeding through The Great Gatsby (The Great Gatsby) on a second Kindle. There was not a physical book in sight, but at least two out of the three of us were sinking our teeth into classic novels we'd have been unlikely to buy in a book shop. 
• Max, Bijan and I had a lengthy discussion about the financial advantages of digital self-publishing for authors. The returns, we decided, were significantly better than when working for a traditional print publisher and, providing the difficulties of marketing one's own products could be overcome, print books may one day be used solely for fine art works and vanity publishing. Bijan will shortly be publishing a Kindle edition of his acclaimed book Afghanistan: A Companion and Guide (Afghanistan: A Companion and Guide (Second Edition) (Odyssey Illustrated Guides)) to put this theory to the test.
• Train journeys and flights are notoriously boring and if, like me, you tend to read quite quickly, your bag quickly fills with books, leaving little room for clothes and other essentials. On my last trip I took the brave step of leaving all books behind and traveling only with my trusty Kindle. The Great Gatsby now complete, I devoured The Book Thief (The Book Thief - enthralling book), Life of Pi (Life of Pi - very overrated)and a fair hunk of Dorian Gray (The Picture of Dorian Gray - a classic but hardly fast-moving) in a single 24-hour period. And, for a change, there was still place for a jumper and toothbrush.
• At a meeting of the editorial board for the journal Asian Affairs, we talked at length about the changing forms of subscription to the journal and how to better reach our target market. It appears that the vast majority of journal subscribers now subscribe to a digital service rather than a paper copy, and that readers are keen to pay for and download a single article (having read the initial abstract) rather than a complete issue.
• As an experiment (and given that much of my writing sits on my hard-disk undistributed), I registered an Amazon e-publishing account and trawled through the pages of instructions about how to format and upload a Kindle-compatible e-book. Although one or two things still have me stumped (specifically how to put each entry of my contents page or bibliography on a new line without the software automatically deciding I want a new paragraph and consequently indenting the text), the whole process is relatively straightforward: certainly more so than the rigmarole of preparing a print text (see my previous blog on the Bradt guide to Kazakhstan!). A few hours later, with text now more or less aligned and the numerous pictures integrated, my dissertation on the development of portraiture at the Mughal court (and specifically its use as a tool to promote imperial ideology) was uploaded, approved, and for sale. It really was as easy as that and here's the link to prove it (Mughal Painting and the Development of Imperial Portraiture 1526-1707).  

It is, of course, now time for me to sum up and give an enlightened conclusion. That's not going to happen, because I think the direction that publishing is taking is actually quite clear and there is little I can say to add. We retain a sentimental attachment to our books, in part because we've grown up with them, but there are few people who can genuinely say that digital books are not a more practical option. When one day I have children, I am certain that they will grow attached not to the physical pages of a paperback but to the multitude of stories that can be shared with them at the press of a single button. My gift to them may not be books, but it will be a library nonetheless.

RIP Travel Journals

I could have been Marco Polo. I could have been Ibn Battuta. God knows it, I could even have been the Emperor Babur. Or at least followed in their glorious literary footsteps. But no - it is not to be. Yet another carefully written travel journal has gone AWOL. Deprived of my most recent set of memories, be they down the back of the luggage carousel, lost in someone else's suitcase, or simply swallowed by a customs official, I shall probably never know. The only good thing to come out of it is that I am finally convinced to go digital, abandoning humble pen and ink for a link to the world wide web.

The role of this blog, like my journals before it, is to keep track of the things that I see, the places I go, and the weird and wonderful things that I hear. It's an aide memoire when I'm writing an article or proposal months down the line, and also a chance to reflect on encounters. It won't be a simple travelogue (that would not only be dull but frightfully self-indulgent) but also a place to make notes on politics and society, economics and culture, and the ways they continually twist and shift. I have a very privileged existence, and I'll use this blog to share a little of what I learn along the way.