The book, Kim, was written by Rudyard Kipling. It is a story about a poor, Irish boy named Kimball O'Hara, shortened to Kim, who travels around colonial India seeking adventure. He is an orphan and has lived all his life in this British colony. Kim later meets a lama, a monk of a religion similar to Bhuddism, and searches with him for a holy river that cleanses all sins. One day, he met the people in the regiment his father, who had passed away long before Kim was born, used to work in. He was sent to school to learn and to be transformed into a sahib, another word for a master. After his schooling was over, he learned many skills from people, such as manipulating minds. The cunning boy also knew how to steal, lie, cheat, and to beg for food and housing. With these skills the British Secret Service sent him on a mission to capture the maps, letters, notes and diagrams of Russian spies in the Himalayas. At the end, he accomplishes his mission and the lama, who had been searching unsuccessfully in vain, found his river quite on accident.
             Now that I have read the book, I wish that I could learn more about colonial India and its different cultures. It may sound boring, but Rudyard Kipling writes it in such a way that it becomes extremely interesting and it makes people yearn to learn more about the Indian culture. Some examples of Indian culture are how people are categorized. The upper-class people are called sahibs. Another interesting term is babu. This word means an educated native person speaking English. What is funny about this is that this is a rude way of addressing a person and it was also used to poke fun because of their broken English and strange accent. The British were racist towards the natives. Not only is this what makes the book interesting, but also how the people lived in India. Unlike America where there are many middle-class people, India had mainly two different types of people. They were ...