I first read part of the famous Indian epic, The Ramayana, in a book of children’s stories from around the world, and another epic, The Maharbharat in my twenties. Books that are on my keep forever favourite reads on a bookshelf.
I have not read all of Rudyard Kipling’s work but I enjoyed Kim, The Jungle Book and Just So Stories.
Curious about the author I am reading Kipling’s biography by Andrew Lycett.
Twenty-year old Kipling was a published poet, author and special correspondent living in India. My respect for him dwindled when I read “Lumping the Mahabharat with other national epic he concluded that the working world of today has no place for these ponderous records of nothingness’. (Learning that William Morris listed the Mahabharat as one of the world’s hundred best books, Rudyard was incensed.)
Today there is a place for these epic.
Compared to my friend who travels the lenght and breadth of India studying philosophy and religion Kipling could have drawn inspiration form the books he despised.
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