The Lure of the East

The thirty-fifth in my on-going series on the poetry of Rudyard Kipling. The other posts in the series may be read here, here , here , here, here , here, here, here, here, here, here, here , here, here, here , here, here, here , here, here, here , here, here , here , here , here , here,  here, here , here,  here ,  here  , here and here.

Kipling was born on December 30, 1865 in Bombay, and always thought of himself as an Anglo-Indian.  Often derided in our deeply ignorant times as an unthinking defender of the British Empire, Kipling was actually a skeptic of the staying power of the West in the East.  If he could be brought back he would not be surprised that the British Raj ended over seven decades ago.  I think he would be surprised at the influence that British culture still has among elite India.

Never a sentimentalist, Kipling could be brutally honest about West and East, but he could understand, and to some extent share in, the attraction of the East for many Westerners.  This is most powerfully illustrated in his poem Mandalay (1890) set in Burma which had recently come under British rule.  A powerful recitation of this poem is given by Charles Dance, portraying Lord Mountbatten, to a gathering of the Burma Star Association in the video above.   Mountbatten had served as the Supreme Commander Allied Forces in Southeast Asia in the latter part of World War II.  The Burma Star Association was a veteran’s organization of Brits who had served in Burma during World War II, primarily in the British 14th Army, the self-proclaimed Forgotten Army, which, under the brilliant leadership of Field Marshal William Slim, waged war on a shoestring and drove the Japanese from Burma in one of the more harrowing campaigns of the Pacific War.

The poem is the longing of a British soldier who had served in Burma to return to it:

By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin’ eastward to the sea,
There’s a Burma girl a-settin’, and I know she thinks o’ me;
For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say:
“Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!”
Come you back to Mandalay,
Where the old Flotilla lay:
Can’t you ‘ear their paddles chunkin’ from Rangoon to Mandalay?
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin’-fishes play,
An’ the dawn comes up like thunder outer China ‘crost the Bay!

Kipling sets the poem with a longing by the soldier for a Burmese woman he knew  and for the sights and sounds of the foreign land he had served in.

‘Er petticoat was yaller an’ ‘er little cap was green,
An’ ‘er name was Supi-yaw-lat — jes’ the same as Theebaw’s Queen,
An’ I seed her first a-smokin’ of a whackin’ white cheroot,
An’ a-wastin’ Christian kisses on an ‘eathen idol’s foot:
Bloomin’ idol made o’mud —
Wot they called the Great Gawd Budd —
Plucky lot she cared for idols when I kissed ‘er where she stud!
On the road to Mandalay . . .

The soldier of course is not an expert on the Buddhist religion and interprets what he saw from his frame of reference which was long on experience and short on education, at least the education derived from books.

When the mist was on the rice-fields an’ the sun was droppin’ slow,
She’d git ‘er little banjo an’ she’d sing “Kulla-lo-lo!”
With ‘er arm upon my shoulder an’ ‘er cheek agin’ my cheek
We useter watch the steamers an’ the hathis pilin’ teak.
Elephints a-pilin’ teak
In the sludgy, squdgy creek,
Where the silence ‘ung that ‘eavy you was ‘arf afraid to speak!
On the road to Mandalay . . .

Good memories, ever our solace in this vale of tears.

But that’s all shove be’ind me — long ago an’ fur away,
An’ there ain’t no ‘busses runnin’ from the Bank to Mandalay;
An’ I’m learnin’ ‘ere in London what the ten-year soldier tells:
“If you’ve ‘eard the East a-callin’, you won’t never ‘eed naught else.”
No! you won’t ‘eed nothin’ else
But them spicy garlic smells,
An’ the sunshine an’ the palm-trees an’ the tinkly temple-bells;
On the road to Mandalay . . .

He compares his life in London and finds it wanting to what he had experienced in the East.  Memory of course often tends to partially eliminate the bad and emphasize the good, not one of the least of the mercies God grants us.

I am sick o’ wastin’ leather on these gritty pavin’-stones,
An’ the blasted Henglish drizzle wakes the fever in my bones;
Tho’ I walks with fifty ‘ousemaids outer Chelsea to the Strand,
An’ they talks a lot o’ lovin’, but wot do they understand?
Beefy face an’ grubby ‘and —
Law! wot do they understand?
I’ve a neater, sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land!
On the road to Mandalay . . .

His complaints about British weather would be echoed, I think, by many down the centuries.  As for his complaint about British women, well, many comparisons tend to be invidious and arguments over taste are like attempting to instruct a dog on the finer points of algebra.

Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst,
Where there aren’t no Ten Commandments an’ a man can raise a thirst;
For the temple-bells are callin’, an’ it’s there that I would be —
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, looking lazy at the sea;
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the old Flotilla lay,
With our sick beneath the awnings when we went to Mandalay!
On the road to Mandalay,
Where the flyin’-fishes play,
An’ the dawn comes up like thunder outer China ‘crost the Bay!

Going native, as the saying went in Kipling’s time, was a temptation for many who came East during the heyday of colonialism.  Kipling often wrote about it, and the essential futility of attempting to become what one is not.  However, the lure of the East was not a mystery to Kipling who left India, but India never left him.