0:00:08 > 0:00:10CHEERING
0:00:11 > 0:00:14Rudyard Kipling left Tilbury to sail to Bombay
0:00:14 > 0:00:17in September, 1882.
0:00:26 > 0:00:27He was 16 -
0:00:27 > 0:00:31one of thousands of young people sailing away every year
0:00:31 > 0:00:34to take advantage of a world brimming with new possibilities.
0:00:36 > 0:00:39The British Empire was at its peak.
0:00:39 > 0:00:43It would never be as powerful or as confident again.
0:00:44 > 0:00:48India was its beating, burning heart.
0:00:49 > 0:00:52Like so many others, Kipling was a teenager
0:00:52 > 0:00:56without the education or the wealth or the connections
0:00:56 > 0:00:59to stand much chance of making it back home.
0:00:59 > 0:01:02He was seizing the opportunities of a new world.
0:01:04 > 0:01:08Just seven years later, he was to sail back to London,
0:01:08 > 0:01:11lionised as one of the most famous and celebrated writers
0:01:11 > 0:01:13in the English language.
0:01:14 > 0:01:19But today, he's unfashionable and, I think, misunderstood.
0:01:19 > 0:01:21People think of him as a stuffy reactionary -
0:01:21 > 0:01:23at best, politically incorrect,
0:01:23 > 0:01:27at worst, an apologist for all the ills of the British Empire.
0:01:27 > 0:01:30But the writer I know and love is more complex.
0:01:30 > 0:01:33In truth, the young Kipling was an outsider
0:01:33 > 0:01:35and even something of a rebel.
0:01:37 > 0:01:40This was a teenager drawn to the dark side
0:01:40 > 0:01:44and, in Colonial India, he broke every rule in the book...
0:01:47 > 0:01:51..experimenting with mind-altering drugs,
0:01:51 > 0:01:53looking for sex where he shouldn't
0:01:53 > 0:01:57and writing about his experiences with unparalleled honesty
0:01:57 > 0:02:01in some of the most original and innovative stories ever written,
0:02:01 > 0:02:03but it was not a picture of Imperial India
0:02:03 > 0:02:05the colonialists wanted to read.
0:02:05 > 0:02:08In his rebellion, which is really what it was,
0:02:08 > 0:02:12he does expose the dirty side of British India.
0:02:12 > 0:02:16As a writer and a former soldier, Kipling has always fascinated me.
0:02:16 > 0:02:19Now I want to go back and find out how this extraordinary
0:02:19 > 0:02:22rite of passage transformed the teenage Kipling
0:02:22 > 0:02:26and how, in the process, he changed our understanding of India forever.
0:02:41 > 0:02:44What must it have been like to disembark at Bombay
0:02:44 > 0:02:47on the evening of the 18th of October, 1882?
0:02:49 > 0:02:52Kipling had lived here before as a child,
0:02:52 > 0:02:55but had been sent away for 11 miserable years.
0:02:56 > 0:02:59Now he was coming home to his beloved India...
0:03:00 > 0:03:03..for Kipling later wrote that he returned to India
0:03:03 > 0:03:05as a prince entering his kingdom.
0:03:08 > 0:03:11And the contrast with the grey monotony of his childhood years
0:03:11 > 0:03:14in Southsea couldn't have been any greater.
0:03:18 > 0:03:22There was the noise, the sudden heat, like opening an oven door,
0:03:22 > 0:03:25there were the smells,
0:03:25 > 0:03:28there was the brilliant coloured saris - fuchsia pink,
0:03:28 > 0:03:32blue, emerald green - and masses of people.
0:03:42 > 0:03:44TRAIN WHISTLES
0:03:45 > 0:03:50But Kipling's destination was to an outpost 900 miles away,
0:03:50 > 0:03:53in Lahore, where his family lived...
0:03:54 > 0:03:58..a frontier town ruled over by just 70 colonials.
0:04:00 > 0:04:03Lahore had been in British hands for less than 35 years.
0:04:04 > 0:04:08It was the last major Indian city to become part of the Empire.
0:04:10 > 0:04:14But, although they were far from home, the Victorians who came here
0:04:14 > 0:04:17were keen to create a very distinctive little England
0:04:17 > 0:04:18in the Punjab.
0:04:19 > 0:04:22There are two quite different Lahores.
0:04:22 > 0:04:25There's the Civil Lines, which is where the British lived.
0:04:25 > 0:04:28This is well laid out with nice big bungalows
0:04:28 > 0:04:31and with large gardens and everybody is living there very safely.
0:04:31 > 0:04:36And then there's a wall and then within that wall is the Old City
0:04:36 > 0:04:40and this is a place of squalor and dirt and disease, where the people
0:04:40 > 0:04:44are living cheek by jowl and it's a place where the British do not go.
0:04:45 > 0:04:50# He's an Englishman... #
0:04:50 > 0:04:52Ignoring the culture of India,
0:04:52 > 0:04:56the British here were obsessed with preserving the rituals of home,
0:04:56 > 0:04:59at work and at play, in what they ate
0:04:59 > 0:05:01and, of course, in what they wore.
0:05:01 > 0:05:05# That he is an Englishman
0:05:05 > 0:05:09# That he is an Englishman... #
0:05:09 > 0:05:12One gets this sense with the British in India
0:05:12 > 0:05:15of a constant fight for standards in dress.
0:05:15 > 0:05:19It's part of their fight against the country itself.
0:05:19 > 0:05:21It certainly took on a psychological aspect.
0:05:21 > 0:05:24It was partly a fight against the country itself
0:05:24 > 0:05:27and partly an expression of being the ruling caste.
0:05:27 > 0:05:30They actually did change for dinner when they were in the jungle.
0:05:30 > 0:05:32It wasn't a fallacy.
0:05:32 > 0:05:35# He remains an Englishman... #
0:05:35 > 0:05:39They were keeping up standards in front of the Indians.
0:05:39 > 0:05:42# E-E-E-E-E-E
0:05:42 > 0:05:47# Englishman. #
0:05:48 > 0:05:52Lahore had a Victorian railway and an elegant town hall.
0:05:52 > 0:05:56It had museums and public gardens that equalled those
0:05:56 > 0:05:59in Brighton or Leeds and it even had a school of art
0:05:59 > 0:06:01where Kipling's father was the principal.
0:06:03 > 0:06:07But Lockwood Kipling was very different from his colonial peers.
0:06:07 > 0:06:10Instead of turning away from Indian culture, he studied it.
0:06:13 > 0:06:17Rudyard Kipling's father was one of the key champions
0:06:17 > 0:06:20of Indian art and craft movement
0:06:20 > 0:06:22in the whole of India.
0:06:22 > 0:06:26One of his daughters said about Lockwood Kipling that
0:06:26 > 0:06:30he knew something about everything and everything about something.
0:06:30 > 0:06:34And it is only logical that his son,
0:06:34 > 0:06:40with this literary sort of genius in him, would be inspired
0:06:40 > 0:06:44and his imagination will be, you know, provoked
0:06:44 > 0:06:48by the kind of images that he sort of confronted
0:06:48 > 0:06:50and lived with in India.
0:06:51 > 0:06:54His father was an important influence on him, but Kipling
0:06:54 > 0:06:58wasn't an academic and his first challenge was to find a job.
0:06:59 > 0:07:02Luckily, there was an opening that would suit him well,
0:07:02 > 0:07:06working on the local newspaper - The Civil and Military Gazette.
0:07:07 > 0:07:10Charles Allen's great-grandfather was the man who gave him the job.
0:07:11 > 0:07:15My grandfather, I suppose you could say he was the Murdoch of his age
0:07:15 > 0:07:18in India. He had two newspapers - one, The Pioneer,
0:07:18 > 0:07:20which was the biggest newspaper in India,
0:07:20 > 0:07:24and then there was a strange little newspaper right out in Lahore,
0:07:24 > 0:07:27right out on the frontier, The Civil and Military Gazette,
0:07:27 > 0:07:29and that sums it up exactly.
0:07:29 > 0:07:32It was for a tiny community of civil administrators and military men
0:07:32 > 0:07:35and that really was its clientele.
0:07:35 > 0:07:38But it had to have an editor and it had to have an assistant editor,
0:07:38 > 0:07:40so young Rudy, at 16,
0:07:40 > 0:07:43he's appointed the second most important man on the newspaper
0:07:43 > 0:07:46and he's in charge with putting it to bed every night.
0:07:46 > 0:07:51It's an astonishing responsibility, you could say, for a 16-year-old.
0:07:52 > 0:07:55Dropped into the deep end of newspaper publishing without
0:07:55 > 0:07:58any training, Kipling had to learn quickly to write and sub-edit
0:07:58 > 0:08:00up against tight deadlines.
0:08:01 > 0:08:04Kipling would later describe his time at the CMG
0:08:04 > 0:08:06as his "seven years' hard".
0:08:06 > 0:08:08Hard labour, perhaps, but a fantastic apprenticeship
0:08:08 > 0:08:10for an aspiring writer.
0:08:12 > 0:08:14To begin with,
0:08:14 > 0:08:17Kipling wasn't allowed to write about the real India.
0:08:17 > 0:08:20He was confined instead to the narrow world of the Anglo-Indians.
0:08:21 > 0:08:25Like a cub reporter in a Home Counties small town,
0:08:25 > 0:08:28he was first assigned to write up accounts of Gymkhanas,
0:08:28 > 0:08:30tea parties and polo.
0:08:32 > 0:08:36"Why will Lahore not officially recognize a Gymkhana?
0:08:36 > 0:08:40"On Thursday evening, for instance, the attendance was of the thinnest
0:08:40 > 0:08:44"and the ladies present might have been counted on one's fingers.
0:08:44 > 0:08:47"Beyond comparing symptoms of cold and influenza
0:08:47 > 0:08:50"or discussing the comparative merits of quinine pills
0:08:50 > 0:08:53"versus quinine raw, we have little left to talk about."
0:08:55 > 0:08:59Kipling's earliest reports reflected back to the Anglo-Indians in Lahore
0:08:59 > 0:09:02the image of themselves that they liked the best,
0:09:02 > 0:09:05confirming that they were more British than the British back home.
0:09:07 > 0:09:11Their social centre was here - the Punjab Club.
0:09:11 > 0:09:14The club was an all-male preserve for Europeans only
0:09:14 > 0:09:18and there were fewer than 100 people eligible in the whole of Lahore.
0:09:18 > 0:09:21Kipling wrote of the club rather disparagingly.
0:09:21 > 0:09:24It was a place where "bachelors mostly gathered to eat meals
0:09:24 > 0:09:27"of no merit with men whose merits they knew well."
0:09:28 > 0:09:32Still only a teenager, Kipling was mixing with some of the most
0:09:32 > 0:09:35important men in the Punjab, but he found their company dreary.
0:09:35 > 0:09:38There was no-one his own age and the other members felt
0:09:38 > 0:09:42that young Rudyard had a caddishly dirty tongue.
0:09:42 > 0:09:43He would later write,
0:09:43 > 0:09:47"There is no society in India as we understand the word.
0:09:47 > 0:09:49"There are no books, no pictures,
0:09:49 > 0:09:53"no conversations worth listening to for recreation's sake.
0:09:53 > 0:09:57"No-one talks lightly and amusingly as they do in England.
0:09:57 > 0:10:00"They don't seem to realize any of the beauties of life.
0:10:00 > 0:10:02"Perhaps they haven't the time."
0:10:03 > 0:10:05This is obviously gentleman members only.
0:10:05 > 0:10:08'The Punjab Club is still open for business but, of course,
0:10:08 > 0:10:10'the members are now Pakistani.
0:10:10 > 0:10:13'And 12 years ago, they admitted the first woman,
0:10:13 > 0:10:15'journalist Nelofar Bakhtyar.'
0:10:15 > 0:10:17So here we are.
0:10:18 > 0:10:21Kipling writes in his memoirs that the club became
0:10:21 > 0:10:23"the whole of my outside world"
0:10:23 > 0:10:27because he would toil at the offices of The Civil and Military Gazette
0:10:27 > 0:10:30and then come here at the club for his dinners.
0:10:30 > 0:10:34He would be heckled mercilessly at times
0:10:34 > 0:10:37for what was published in the paper,
0:10:37 > 0:10:40even though, at that time, he was just an assistant editor
0:10:40 > 0:10:43and he really had no control over the editorial policy.
0:10:43 > 0:10:47Kipling would have to apologize for the mistakes that his editor made
0:10:47 > 0:10:51and the editor was married so he never used to come to the club.
0:10:51 > 0:10:54- So Kipling bore the brunt... - Yes, he bore the brunt of it.
0:10:54 > 0:10:58He spent only five of his 70 years in Lahore
0:10:58 > 0:11:01but those five years were extremely crucial
0:11:01 > 0:11:04in his development as a writer.
0:11:04 > 0:11:09And all of this happened because he had the innate curiosity,
0:11:09 > 0:11:11as it were, to step out of the bubble
0:11:11 > 0:11:13in which he had first entered.
0:11:13 > 0:11:16Here were the people sitting in their clubs
0:11:16 > 0:11:19and really not bothering to look out of their window, as it were,
0:11:19 > 0:11:22while this whole colourful circus is going past
0:11:22 > 0:11:25and they are completely immune to it.
0:11:26 > 0:11:28CHANTING
0:11:33 > 0:11:37It wasn't just lack of interest that was keeping the ruling class
0:11:37 > 0:11:39locked away in the club -
0:11:39 > 0:11:40it was also fear.
0:11:44 > 0:11:47The Indian mutiny which had brought colonial rule in India
0:11:47 > 0:11:50to the brink of collapse was only a generation away.
0:11:50 > 0:11:52GUNFIRE
0:11:53 > 0:11:58To maintain order, 30,000 soldiers were now stationed across India.
0:11:59 > 0:12:02Lahore was one of the most important military outposts.
0:12:03 > 0:12:05Bored by the old men in the club,
0:12:05 > 0:12:09the young soldiers were the only men of Kipling's age in the city.
0:12:09 > 0:12:13They were to become an important inspiration for his writing.
0:12:19 > 0:12:21Kipling was fascinated by the military.
0:12:21 > 0:12:25It's been suggested that he always regretted his poor eyesight
0:12:25 > 0:12:27prevented him from going to Sandhurst,
0:12:27 > 0:12:30so it's no surprise that he was impressed by and enjoyed socialising
0:12:30 > 0:12:34with the junior officers who were stationed here in the Lahore Fort,
0:12:34 > 0:12:38waiting to be deployed up to the north-west frontier provinces.
0:12:41 > 0:12:44These were men with exciting stories to tell
0:12:44 > 0:12:48and Kipling writes of long, hot, drunken evenings
0:12:48 > 0:12:50that went on late into the night.
0:12:56 > 0:12:59The soldiers on fort duty or confined to barracks
0:12:59 > 0:13:02had a hard time of it in the Indian summer.
0:13:02 > 0:13:05Boredom, disease and heat could claim more victims
0:13:05 > 0:13:08than a skirmish on the Afghan frontier.
0:13:08 > 0:13:12Reporting for the CMG, Kipling wrote about fights between soldiers
0:13:12 > 0:13:15ending in them killing each other, arising from temper in the heat.
0:13:15 > 0:13:19And in his early stories, Kipling would write of soldiers
0:13:19 > 0:13:22cracking up with the boredom and isolation of Indian barracks life.
0:13:26 > 0:13:29Kipling's first exploration of this subject was in some verse
0:13:29 > 0:13:32written just over a year after arriving in India.
0:13:37 > 0:13:39In Kipling's poem, On Fort Duty,
0:13:39 > 0:13:42the soldiers cooped up here in the Lahore Fort
0:13:42 > 0:13:45dream of action on the frontier
0:13:45 > 0:13:49where the passes ring with rifles and the sound of Afghan raids.
0:13:49 > 0:13:53"I look across the ramparts to the northward and the snow,
0:13:53 > 0:13:56"to the far Cherat cantonments
0:13:56 > 0:13:58"but, alas, I cannot go.
0:13:58 > 0:14:02"Oh, its everlasting gun-drill and eight o'clock parades,
0:14:02 > 0:14:05"its cleaning up of mortars, likewise of carronades,
0:14:05 > 0:14:10"while the passes ring with rifles and the noise of Afghan raids.
0:14:10 > 0:14:14"And I look across the ramparts to the river, broad and grey,
0:14:14 > 0:14:16"and I think of merry England
0:14:16 > 0:14:19"where the festive Horse Guards play."
0:14:20 > 0:14:23Kipling may have been impressed by the officers,
0:14:23 > 0:14:26but it was the ordinary soldiers he was really interested in.
0:14:26 > 0:14:28Unusually for someone of his background at the time,
0:14:28 > 0:14:32Kipling socialised with private soldiers and, over beer,
0:14:32 > 0:14:35he studied the way they talked and the way they thought.
0:14:35 > 0:14:40I think we've also got to remember that young Kipling is an outsider.
0:14:40 > 0:14:42Look at him, he is a runt.
0:14:42 > 0:14:46He's very short, he's myopic, he can hardly see without his glasses
0:14:46 > 0:14:49and, on top of that, he's dyspraxic.
0:14:49 > 0:14:52He's totally disjointed. He keeps falling off his horse.
0:14:52 > 0:14:54He can't play sports. He really is an outsider.
0:14:54 > 0:14:58The people he admires most of all are the upright British soldiers -
0:14:58 > 0:14:59the officers in particular.
0:14:59 > 0:15:03But, in that process, he learns about this other community,
0:15:03 > 0:15:06this other group of outsiders - the ordinary soldier.
0:15:10 > 0:15:12Kipling would later immortalise these men
0:15:12 > 0:15:14as Tommy Atkins and Danny Deever
0:15:14 > 0:15:18and his three musketeers, Learoyd, Mulvaney and Ortheris.
0:15:19 > 0:15:21Kipling seemed to get along with the soldiers,
0:15:21 > 0:15:25but whether or not he got along with the officers is another matter.
0:15:25 > 0:15:28One member of the general staff would write disparagingly of Kipling
0:15:28 > 0:15:32that he was disapproved of as being mutinous and above his station.
0:15:37 > 0:15:39'Polo is still played in Lahore
0:15:39 > 0:15:42'and, while there are no British soldiers here, there are plenty
0:15:42 > 0:15:46'of old soldiers from the Pakistani Army who know Kipling's work well.'
0:15:46 > 0:15:49Kipling loved soldiers and he loved adventure
0:15:49 > 0:15:52so, Major Mawaz, you had the sort of adventures, by the sound of it,
0:15:52 > 0:15:55that Kipling would have written a story about.
0:15:55 > 0:16:00I was bitten by the most poisonous snake in the desert, I survived.
0:16:00 > 0:16:03I had three bullets in my body, I survived.
0:16:03 > 0:16:06I was missing, believed killed, I survived.
0:16:06 > 0:16:10Then I was supposed to be killed by these Muktis and Indians.
0:16:10 > 0:16:13And you know the Muktis would take your eyes out,
0:16:13 > 0:16:16they would cut your ears - that's how they killed you.
0:16:16 > 0:16:20I had been told three times, "Your time is tomorrow.
0:16:20 > 0:16:23"In the morning, that's what's going to happen to you."
0:16:23 > 0:16:27So, by all standards, I should have been dead a long time ago,
0:16:27 > 0:16:29but...
0:16:29 > 0:16:31somebody up there likes me, you know?
0:16:31 > 0:16:33You're the unbreakable soldier.
0:16:33 > 0:16:35- Yes.- Can't do anything to him.
0:16:35 > 0:16:37LAUGHTER
0:16:39 > 0:16:42I'm here trying to follow in young Kipling's footsteps
0:16:42 > 0:16:45and it's strange because his reputation today
0:16:45 > 0:16:47is maybe not as popular as it once was.
0:16:47 > 0:16:52I think people think he represents the part of the British Empire
0:16:52 > 0:16:55- which is bad, but actually... - No, no, no.
0:16:56 > 0:17:00You see, as we're growing, the generations are changing,
0:17:00 > 0:17:03and all stories go away - they die.
0:17:03 > 0:17:08But if you ask older people my age or his age,
0:17:08 > 0:17:09they all know Kipling.
0:17:09 > 0:17:12They all know he was associated with us,
0:17:12 > 0:17:15he was very much a part of this country for seven, eight years.
0:17:19 > 0:17:22TRAIN WHISTLES
0:17:25 > 0:17:29Spending time with soldiers made Kipling more determined than ever
0:17:29 > 0:17:31to get out from behind his desk.
0:17:31 > 0:17:33His chance came at the age of 18.
0:17:33 > 0:17:36He was made special correspondent for the Gazette
0:17:36 > 0:17:40and allowed to go out and report on the real India for the first time.
0:17:42 > 0:17:44"So, soon as my paper could trust me a little
0:17:44 > 0:17:47"and I had behaved well at routine work, I was sent out.
0:17:47 > 0:17:51"Communal riots under the shadow of the Mosque of Wazir Khan,
0:17:51 > 0:17:53"visits of viceroys to neighbouring princes
0:17:53 > 0:17:56"on the edge of the great Indian desert,
0:17:56 > 0:17:59"reviews of armies expecting to move against Russia next week."
0:18:05 > 0:18:08Given licence to travel and report across India,
0:18:08 > 0:18:11a new world was opening up.
0:18:11 > 0:18:14No longer confined to writing reports of Gymkhanas,
0:18:14 > 0:18:17Kipling enjoyed the real freedom of being a journalist
0:18:17 > 0:18:19for the first time
0:18:19 > 0:18:23as the outsider looking in, making sense of what he sees.
0:18:27 > 0:18:31He seems to be so good at going out, looking at a subject,
0:18:31 > 0:18:34studying it from all its aspects, asking the right questions,
0:18:34 > 0:18:37finding the essence of that particular skill,
0:18:37 > 0:18:40that particular subject, and then keeping it in his head.
0:18:40 > 0:18:44He does have, like all the great writers, an extraordinary memory.
0:18:44 > 0:18:48All the information he needs is tucked away and he brings it out.
0:18:48 > 0:18:51He learned how to be short and to be brief and to be accurate
0:18:51 > 0:18:53and those qualities helped him.
0:18:53 > 0:18:57The other thing, he had a huge gift for observation.
0:18:58 > 0:19:02As a writer, he was finding his subject and growing fast.
0:19:03 > 0:19:06But Kipling's opportunities for travel came to an end
0:19:06 > 0:19:08when the weather turned hot.
0:19:09 > 0:19:12Like most Europeans, his editor would flee from the unbearable
0:19:12 > 0:19:16Lahore summers, taking trains to much cooler hill stations.
0:19:21 > 0:19:23Kipling was stuck in the city,
0:19:23 > 0:19:27turning out The Civil and Military Gazette, sometimes single-handedly.
0:19:27 > 0:19:30He was isolated and alone
0:19:30 > 0:19:33and his nervous disposition started to get the better of him.
0:19:33 > 0:19:38Often sick and terrified of catching a fatal illness, he couldn't sleep.
0:19:39 > 0:19:43His night terrors grew worse and he started pacing about outside,
0:19:43 > 0:19:47increasingly curious about the city at night.
0:19:48 > 0:19:51Inevitably, he was drawn like a magnet to the medieval city
0:19:51 > 0:19:55of inner Lahore and the wall that separated east from west.
0:19:55 > 0:19:59It was a dividing line that few English people had ever crossed.
0:20:04 > 0:20:07He hated the hot weather, he hated being alone.
0:20:07 > 0:20:10His parents that he's been living with have disappeared to the hills
0:20:10 > 0:20:12and suddenly he's alone in this huge house
0:20:12 > 0:20:14and he starts to have breakdowns.
0:20:14 > 0:20:18He's really frightened that he's going to catch a disease and die
0:20:18 > 0:20:20or that he's going to overheat and die
0:20:20 > 0:20:22and he walks from room to room,
0:20:22 > 0:20:24he gets his servants to throw water over him
0:20:24 > 0:20:27and he cannot get any sleep and this is part of what makes him
0:20:27 > 0:20:31take up his night walks, when he starts to wander in the night.
0:20:34 > 0:20:37What he found when he crossed the wall
0:20:37 > 0:20:40was a hidden city that never sleeps.
0:20:53 > 0:20:55"Often the night got into my head
0:20:55 > 0:20:59"and I would wander till dawn in all manner of odd places...
0:20:59 > 0:21:03"liquor-shops, gambling and opium-dens,
0:21:03 > 0:21:07"wayside entertainment such as puppet-shows, native dances
0:21:07 > 0:21:11"or in and about the narrow gullies under the Mosque of Wazir Khan
0:21:11 > 0:21:13"for the sheer sake of looking.
0:21:13 > 0:21:16"Sometimes the police would challenge,
0:21:16 > 0:21:18"but I knew most of their officers.
0:21:18 > 0:21:21"Having no position to consider and my trade enforcing it,
0:21:21 > 0:21:25"I could move at will in the fourth dimension."
0:21:29 > 0:21:32Having crossed a barrier that separated the two cultures,
0:21:32 > 0:21:35Kipling discovered, as he wrote,
0:21:35 > 0:21:39that "much of real Indian life goes on in the hot weather nights."
0:21:44 > 0:21:47It wasn't just in Kipling's time that Europeans didn't really come
0:21:47 > 0:21:51into the walled city. We've been advised to be very careful
0:21:51 > 0:21:52when we're wandering about
0:21:52 > 0:21:55and, even in the space of this little exploration,
0:21:55 > 0:21:58we've picked up a policeman wielding an AK-47
0:21:58 > 0:22:00who's clearing people off behind us.
0:22:00 > 0:22:04It feels quite unusual to have a sense of people watching you in that
0:22:04 > 0:22:07regard and it must have been what Kipling felt like when he first came
0:22:07 > 0:22:11down here as possibly the only white face those people had ever seen.
0:22:15 > 0:22:19What Kipling saw here fascinated him.
0:22:21 > 0:22:25"The yard-wide gullies into which the moonlight cannot struggle
0:22:25 > 0:22:28"are full of mystery, stories of life and death
0:22:28 > 0:22:32"and intrigue of which we, the Mall abiding, open-windowed,
0:22:32 > 0:22:36"purdah-less English know nothing and believe less.
0:22:36 > 0:22:42"Properly exploited, our City would yield a store of novels."
0:22:47 > 0:22:50And, as this teenager started to break one taboo,
0:22:50 > 0:22:52others would follow.
0:22:52 > 0:22:56It wasn't long before he began another form of experimentation.
0:23:04 > 0:23:07In the middle of one particularly stifling night,
0:23:07 > 0:23:12on September 16th, 1884, Kipling was woken with terrible stomach pains.
0:23:12 > 0:23:16His manservant brought him an opium pipe to relieve the pain.
0:23:18 > 0:23:19Kipling describes the effect -
0:23:19 > 0:23:23"Presently, I felt the cramps in my leg dying out
0:23:23 > 0:23:25"and then my tummy rested
0:23:25 > 0:23:29"and a minute or two later it felt as though I fell through the floor."
0:23:30 > 0:23:32INTENSE MUSIC
0:23:42 > 0:23:46He continued to rely on drugs, in the form of opium, morphine
0:23:46 > 0:23:50and Indian hemp, to get him through Lahore's hot summer nights.
0:23:59 > 0:24:04"The dense, wet heat that hung over the face of land like a blanket
0:24:04 > 0:24:06"prevented all hope of sleep.
0:24:07 > 0:24:11"It was impossible to sit still in the dark, empty, echoing house
0:24:11 > 0:24:14"and watch the punkah beat the dead air,
0:24:14 > 0:24:18"so, at ten o'clock of the night, I set my walking-stick on end
0:24:18 > 0:24:22"in the middle of the garden and waited to see how it would fall.
0:24:22 > 0:24:25"It pointed directly down the moonlit road
0:24:25 > 0:24:27"that leads to the City of Dreadful Night."
0:24:29 > 0:24:33The City of Dreadful Night kept drawing Kipling back in.
0:24:34 > 0:24:37The opium-dens have now gone but, inside the medieval city,
0:24:37 > 0:24:40it can still sometimes be possible to recapture
0:24:40 > 0:24:43some of the drug-fuelled excitement of Kipling's Lahore.
0:24:46 > 0:24:50I've come to a Sufi shrine to see a festival of drumming and dancing.
0:24:50 > 0:24:53It's the sort of mystical side of religion here
0:24:53 > 0:24:57that even in Kipling's day was noted for being quite wild.
0:24:57 > 0:25:01It has a reputation even today of people getting spiritually
0:25:01 > 0:25:04and also physically off their heads.
0:25:04 > 0:25:07And the atmosphere is a little bit like coming to a festival.
0:25:07 > 0:25:10We've been accosted in the street by people who have come up to us
0:25:10 > 0:25:12and said, "We're very excited you're here.
0:25:12 > 0:25:14"You're going to see the real Pakistan."
0:25:14 > 0:25:16A Pakistan of peace and love,
0:25:16 > 0:25:19not the Pakistan of international terrorism.
0:25:19 > 0:25:21This, the dancing, the excitement,
0:25:21 > 0:25:24this is apparently the real Pakistan and I can't help but think
0:25:24 > 0:25:28this is probably the Lahore that Kipling found and that excited him
0:25:28 > 0:25:31and that probably inspired some of his own nocturnal activities.
0:25:50 > 0:25:52LOUD RHYTHMIC DRUMMING
0:26:31 > 0:26:32It's absolutely awesome.
0:26:32 > 0:26:34The drumming, which is amazing,
0:26:34 > 0:26:37and the crowd building up into this chant,
0:26:37 > 0:26:41a bit like before the biggest act in a night at a club comes on.
0:26:41 > 0:26:45And, over in the dark corners, you can see people rolling up.
0:26:45 > 0:26:48But in the main centre, everyone is getting ready
0:26:48 > 0:26:50into this frenetic dance.
0:26:53 > 0:26:57An anonymous article in the CMG attributed to Kipling
0:26:57 > 0:27:00seems to describe an opium trip.
0:27:05 > 0:27:07"Here you are alone,
0:27:07 > 0:27:11"utterly alone on the verge of a waste of moonlit sand.
0:27:12 > 0:27:16"Hundreds and thousands of miles away lies a small, silver pool
0:27:16 > 0:27:19"not bigger than a splash of rain water.
0:27:20 > 0:27:22"A stone is dropped into its bosom.
0:27:22 > 0:27:25"and, as the circles spread,
0:27:25 > 0:27:28"the silver lines broaden from east to west
0:27:28 > 0:27:32"and rush up with inconceivable rapidity to the level of your eyes.
0:27:32 > 0:27:35"You shudder and attempt to fly."
0:27:45 > 0:27:47DRUMMING
0:27:51 > 0:27:55You think of Timothy Leary and drugs and awakening of consciousness -
0:27:55 > 0:27:58you really feel that something like this happens with this youngster.
0:27:58 > 0:28:04This process of hallucination opens up his mind and it stays open.
0:28:04 > 0:28:08It's almost as if he's kind of thrown off all his fears,
0:28:08 > 0:28:12having gone through this process, and he seems to now to write
0:28:12 > 0:28:14from this time onwards with a great freedom
0:28:14 > 0:28:18but, in particular, he seems to revel
0:28:18 > 0:28:21in the squalor and the dirt and the disease
0:28:21 > 0:28:24and he says, "I am in love with India,
0:28:24 > 0:28:27"I am in love with all the dirt and the smells and sounds,"
0:28:27 > 0:28:30and this is a complete change in attitude.
0:28:30 > 0:28:34And he even says, "I now feel like a cock crowing on a dunghill,
0:28:34 > 0:28:37"that this is my empire and I can write about this land.
0:28:37 > 0:28:40"I really feel like a king in his own country."
0:28:43 > 0:28:45Kipling's experience of opium
0:28:45 > 0:28:48inspired his first published short story,
0:28:48 > 0:28:52the tale of an opium addict eking out his last days in a drug den.
0:28:54 > 0:28:57"I've seen so many come in and out
0:28:57 > 0:28:59"and I've seen so many die here on the mats
0:28:59 > 0:29:02"that I should be afraid of dying in the open now.
0:29:02 > 0:29:05"I've seen some things that people would call strange enough
0:29:05 > 0:29:08"but nothing is strange when you're on the black smoke,
0:29:08 > 0:29:10"except the black smoke.
0:29:10 > 0:29:13"And if it was, it wouldn't matter."
0:29:16 > 0:29:18The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows
0:29:18 > 0:29:21is the story that changed everything for Kipling.
0:29:21 > 0:29:23I think it's the first time he realizes
0:29:23 > 0:29:27the power of fiction as opposed to journalism to tell us truths.
0:29:28 > 0:29:32It's the first of his tales of outcasts and derelicts -
0:29:32 > 0:29:35Europeans who've slipped through the cracks in India.
0:29:35 > 0:29:38It's the first example of his original vision
0:29:38 > 0:29:40of the dark side of Indian life.
0:29:41 > 0:29:44And it's all the more remarkable that he managed to publish it
0:29:44 > 0:29:47in The Civil and Military Gazette.
0:29:50 > 0:29:54Opium gave Kipling access to layers of Indian life
0:29:54 > 0:29:57which the British had so wilfully ignored.
0:29:58 > 0:30:02Kipling wrote, "Underneath our excellent administrative system,
0:30:02 > 0:30:04"under the piles of reports and statistics,
0:30:04 > 0:30:07"the thousands of troops, the doctors,
0:30:07 > 0:30:10"runs wholly untouched and unaffected
0:30:10 > 0:30:12"the life of the people of the land.
0:30:12 > 0:30:17"A life as full of impossibilities and wonders as the Arabian nights.
0:30:17 > 0:30:20"Immediately outside of our own English life
0:30:20 > 0:30:23"is the dark and crooked and fantastic and wicked
0:30:23 > 0:30:26"and awe-inspiring life of the native.
0:30:26 > 0:30:30"To understand this dark India and conquer one's fear of it
0:30:30 > 0:30:34"meant putting one's prejudices to one side and reaching out."
0:30:55 > 0:30:58It wasn't just drugs that were enticing Kipling
0:30:58 > 0:31:01to a darker, more exciting side of Indian life.
0:31:01 > 0:31:05Here, in the Shahdara Gardens, prostitutes plied their trade
0:31:05 > 0:31:07amongst the tombs and in the shadows
0:31:07 > 0:31:10and the young Kipling, only 18 at the time,
0:31:10 > 0:31:13escaped the city in search of adventure and distraction.
0:31:18 > 0:31:22He is a teenager and his hormones are raging.
0:31:22 > 0:31:25And he's a very horny young man.
0:31:25 > 0:31:27And he wants to...
0:31:27 > 0:31:30You almost feel his hormones are dragging him into the city.
0:31:33 > 0:31:36We know this from a series of coded entries in his journals
0:31:36 > 0:31:38and letters to friends.
0:31:38 > 0:31:4221st of August, 1885, at the height of the heat,
0:31:42 > 0:31:45when most of the Anglo-Indians would have been away in Shimla,
0:31:45 > 0:31:49Kipling writes, "Usual philander in the gardens.
0:31:49 > 0:31:52"Home to count the risks of my resolution."
0:31:52 > 0:31:55Clearly worried about the after-effects of his encounter.
0:31:55 > 0:31:58Elsewhere, one of his codes - five initials.
0:31:58 > 0:32:01W-R-W-M-T.
0:32:01 > 0:32:04Whatever that meant or whoever that was,
0:32:04 > 0:32:07"A thoroughly satisfactory conclusion."
0:32:07 > 0:32:09In a letter to a friend at the same time, he writes,
0:32:09 > 0:32:12"I'm no more capable of abandoning my writing
0:32:12 > 0:32:15"than I can put aside the occasional woman,
0:32:15 > 0:32:19"which is good for health and the softening of ferocious manners.
0:32:19 > 0:32:21"It is my amusement and, like all amusements,
0:32:21 > 0:32:24"the nicer for being discouraged."
0:32:24 > 0:32:27Kipling may have enjoyed the elicit nature of his encounters,
0:32:27 > 0:32:29but it's clear the other men of the station
0:32:29 > 0:32:33knew of his wanderings in the Old City and they didn't approve,
0:32:33 > 0:32:35one of them saying at the time,
0:32:35 > 0:32:39"Everyone thought he was going for a mucker with the harlotries therein."
0:32:46 > 0:32:50There's no doubt at all that one of the ways that young Rudy Kipling
0:32:50 > 0:32:55learns about India is through the prostitutes of Lahore.
0:32:55 > 0:32:57The phrase that we all now use,
0:32:57 > 0:33:00"The oldest profession in the world", it comes from Kipling.
0:33:04 > 0:33:06When we talk about prostitutes in Lahore,
0:33:06 > 0:33:09we're talking about a very sophisticated group of women.
0:33:09 > 0:33:11They're more like the Geishas of Japan.
0:33:11 > 0:33:15They're there to entertain men and they entertain them with music
0:33:15 > 0:33:17and dancing, they have poetry,
0:33:17 > 0:33:20and young men would go to prostitutes and sit at their court
0:33:20 > 0:33:22and swap stories, they would smoke bhang
0:33:22 > 0:33:27and they would recite poetry to each other and listen to music.
0:33:27 > 0:33:29And young Kipling breaks into that circle
0:33:29 > 0:33:33and he writes with huge sympathy about these women.
0:33:37 > 0:33:40The girls in question would have been in these balconies?
0:33:40 > 0:33:42Yes, indeed. They were entertainers, Patrick,
0:33:42 > 0:33:45whose function was to both...
0:33:45 > 0:33:47for example, recite poetry or music.
0:33:47 > 0:33:51They were all talented as singers, as dancers.
0:33:51 > 0:33:54So, it was a wider range of services they offered
0:33:54 > 0:33:56than simply physical gratification.
0:33:56 > 0:34:00This feels, to me, a little sanitised now.
0:34:00 > 0:34:01It doesn't quite have the edge
0:34:01 > 0:34:04that a proper red-light district would have.
0:34:04 > 0:34:08- Yes, well, red-light districts are not necessarily proper!- Well, yes...
0:34:08 > 0:34:10On the assumption of being improper,
0:34:10 > 0:34:13when you think about it, Kipling's own writing...
0:34:13 > 0:34:16And don't forget, he was writing in the Victorian time,
0:34:16 > 0:34:19and, then, prudery was the mantra.
0:34:19 > 0:34:23There was an element of sanitisation in his writing,
0:34:23 > 0:34:27and so, it was quite understandable that whatever he said
0:34:27 > 0:34:31would have elliptical meanings and, inevitably,
0:34:31 > 0:34:35today, most of the people who are the denizens of this place
0:34:35 > 0:34:37use this as their offices.
0:34:37 > 0:34:39But they live elsewhere.
0:34:39 > 0:34:43But it's still striking that we've got the huge mosque right here,
0:34:43 > 0:34:47- and then the red-light district on its lap.- Yes, indeed.
0:34:47 > 0:34:48The court used to be here,
0:34:48 > 0:34:51and the residence, as well, on the other side.
0:34:51 > 0:34:53I think it was probably an element of temptation.
0:34:53 > 0:34:56If you could resist temptation, then why not?
0:34:59 > 0:35:00Do you think it was part of Lahore
0:35:00 > 0:35:02which made it easier for him to do that?
0:35:02 > 0:35:05Had he been somewhere like Bombay, there'd have been more
0:35:05 > 0:35:07of a temptation to stick with the English?
0:35:07 > 0:35:10Had he been in Bombay, he would have been much more circumscribed
0:35:10 > 0:35:12in his ability to move around the city.
0:35:12 > 0:35:16And, certainly, at the levels that he wanted to savour Lahore,
0:35:16 > 0:35:19the stories that he came up with in Lahore
0:35:19 > 0:35:22were obviously born of his own personal experience
0:35:22 > 0:35:26and born of his personal investigation
0:35:26 > 0:35:30into areas that young boys of that age, young men of that age,
0:35:30 > 0:35:33and, particularly, English boys,
0:35:33 > 0:35:35were not really exposed to.
0:35:35 > 0:35:36So, in a way, it was quite felicitous
0:35:36 > 0:35:39that not only did Kipling arrive here at this age
0:35:39 > 0:35:41where he was open to all these adventures,
0:35:41 > 0:35:44but Lahore was a city that was open to being adventured in.
0:35:44 > 0:35:46It was the perfect marriage for him.
0:35:46 > 0:35:48He was in the right place at the right time.
0:35:48 > 0:35:52And Lahore, one has to be honest, found its voice.
0:35:52 > 0:35:55MARKET BUSTLE
0:36:02 > 0:36:05Whilst Kipling enjoyed taking a walk on the wild side
0:36:05 > 0:36:09in the Walled City, when he came to write about similar transgressions,
0:36:09 > 0:36:11the results were invariably much darker.
0:36:13 > 0:36:16Beyond The Pale is a story of Trejago, an Englishman who,
0:36:16 > 0:36:20not unlike Kipling, knew too much and saw too much.
0:36:20 > 0:36:22Stumbling through the Walled City one night,
0:36:22 > 0:36:25Trejago finds himself in a dark alley, at a dead end,
0:36:25 > 0:36:27beguiled by a beautiful singing voice.
0:36:27 > 0:36:32The voice turns out to belong to Bisesa, a widow of only 15,
0:36:32 > 0:36:36with whom Trejago begins an extraordinary love affair.
0:36:36 > 0:36:39"That night was the beginning of many strange things,
0:36:39 > 0:36:41"and of a double life so wild
0:36:41 > 0:36:44"that Trejago today sometimes wonders if it were not all a dream."
0:36:47 > 0:36:50Trejago returns to the Walled City for the fifth time in three weeks,
0:36:50 > 0:36:52desperate for a sign from his lover.
0:36:52 > 0:36:55Finding himself underneath the same grating
0:36:55 > 0:36:58from which he first heard her beautiful singing,
0:36:58 > 0:37:00he shouts, and is answered.
0:37:00 > 0:37:03To his horror, two arms are thrust through the grating -
0:37:03 > 0:37:06hands cut off, revealing bloody stumps.
0:37:06 > 0:37:10As he recoils, a spear is thrust at him, missing him by a fraction,
0:37:10 > 0:37:12but wounding him in the groin.
0:37:12 > 0:37:16Trejago limps off into the night, cursing his lost love.
0:37:18 > 0:37:21In Kipling's world, despite his own adventures,
0:37:21 > 0:37:24it invariably ends in tragedy when his characters cross the limits
0:37:24 > 0:37:27of what he knowingly refers to as "decent society".
0:37:33 > 0:37:35This young man has broken a taboo.
0:37:35 > 0:37:39He has fallen in love with a native woman from the red-light district
0:37:39 > 0:37:41and it's going to end in tragedy.
0:37:41 > 0:37:43And these stories nearly always do end in tragedy.
0:37:43 > 0:37:46But, this is the first man to write about this.
0:37:46 > 0:37:50Here is a European writing about love across the racial divide.
0:37:52 > 0:37:56Characters like Trejago are no longer the hopeful young men
0:37:56 > 0:37:59arriving from England to make their fortune.
0:37:59 > 0:38:00India has changed them,
0:38:00 > 0:38:03just as it was changing Kipling.
0:38:03 > 0:38:05He was starting to see the contradictions
0:38:05 > 0:38:07and the tragedies of the Raj.
0:38:11 > 0:38:13Then, in 1885,
0:38:13 > 0:38:16just as Kipling was starting to find his subject in Lahore,
0:38:16 > 0:38:20he was diverted and given an opportunity
0:38:20 > 0:38:23to observe Anglo-Indian high society up close.
0:38:23 > 0:38:26He was sent by the Gazette to be the special correspondent
0:38:26 > 0:38:30for the summer season at the hill town of Shimla.
0:38:30 > 0:38:33The posting would allow him to get under the skin of the ruling elite
0:38:33 > 0:38:37and explore a world that was as strange as that of the Walled City.
0:38:37 > 0:38:41It would offer a new direction for him as a writer of short stories.
0:38:45 > 0:38:48Kipling would take the train from Lahore to Ambala,
0:38:48 > 0:38:52and then a horse and cart up the steep mountain road to Shimla.
0:38:52 > 0:38:55Sadly, these days, you can't take the train from Pakistan to India.
0:38:55 > 0:38:59I've had to come across the land border crossing at Wagah.
0:38:59 > 0:39:02I'm coming up on the lush foothills of the Himalayas now.
0:39:02 > 0:39:04It must have been an incredibly welcome sight to Kipling
0:39:04 > 0:39:07and the other Europeans escaping the dusty plains
0:39:07 > 0:39:09and looking forward to getting up out of the heat.
0:39:09 > 0:39:11In 1903, they finally built a railway up to Shimla.
0:39:11 > 0:39:13I'm going to take the train
0:39:13 > 0:39:16rather than take my chances with a horse and cart.
0:39:20 > 0:39:23Perched 7,000 feet up in the Himalayas,
0:39:23 > 0:39:26Shimla was the summer capital of the British Raj.
0:39:26 > 0:39:29And every spring, hundreds of civil servants, clerks
0:39:29 > 0:39:34and administrators made the 1,200-mile journey from Calcutta
0:39:34 > 0:39:37to rule India in a more temperate climate.
0:39:40 > 0:39:45One viceroy regarded this mountain retreat as a preposterous place.
0:39:45 > 0:39:49"That the capital of the Indian Empire should be thus hanging
0:39:49 > 0:39:52"on by its eyelids to the side of a hill is too absurd."
0:39:54 > 0:39:58Shimla was an exclusive world of expensive guest houses and hotels.
0:39:58 > 0:40:00Like all the hill stations,
0:40:00 > 0:40:03it was designed to be an oasis of Englishness -
0:40:03 > 0:40:06with Home County-style architecture,
0:40:06 > 0:40:07rose gardens, picnics,
0:40:07 > 0:40:10lawn tennis and croquet.
0:40:12 > 0:40:15Shimla was probably the most English town in India.
0:40:15 > 0:40:17All the houses were sort of...
0:40:17 > 0:40:19I can best describe them as "Tudorbethan",
0:40:19 > 0:40:22although they did have corrugated iron roofs.
0:40:22 > 0:40:25The flowers in the garden were English flowers -
0:40:25 > 0:40:27irises, sweet peas, roses.
0:40:27 > 0:40:31There was afternoon tea, log fires when you first went there.
0:40:31 > 0:40:34Everything was as English as it could be.
0:40:34 > 0:40:36And the cathedral was English-looking.
0:40:36 > 0:40:38People quite often got married there.
0:40:40 > 0:40:44Unlike Lahore, with its small, stuffy world of 70 administrators,
0:40:44 > 0:40:46this was a bustling playground
0:40:46 > 0:40:48for the cream of Anglo-Indian society.
0:40:49 > 0:40:52It was the court, wasn't it?
0:40:52 > 0:40:54Where deals were done
0:40:54 > 0:40:57and where there was an enormous amount of the kind of life
0:40:57 > 0:40:59that you do have in a court.
0:40:59 > 0:41:01Balls, for example.
0:41:01 > 0:41:05Balls and parties, and...
0:41:05 > 0:41:07people paying visits on each other
0:41:07 > 0:41:11and it being important who comes and visits you and who doesn't.
0:41:11 > 0:41:14And, really, the top of the tree is if you can be intimate
0:41:14 > 0:41:17with the Viceroy, the Queen's representative, and her family,
0:41:17 > 0:41:20which Kipling's parents were, of course.
0:41:20 > 0:41:23MILITARY BAND PLAYS
0:41:31 > 0:41:34'Raaja Bhasin is a writer and historian
0:41:34 > 0:41:37'who is an expert on the British in Shimla during the Raj.'
0:41:38 > 0:41:41What was this place like in Kipling's day?
0:41:41 > 0:41:45For one, the number of people would have been perhaps
0:41:45 > 0:41:47a 50th of what there are there now.
0:41:47 > 0:41:50What would that have been in the 1880s?
0:41:50 > 0:41:53Maybe about 20,000 people and, of that,
0:41:53 > 0:41:56maybe 3,000 or 4,000 Europeans,
0:41:56 > 0:41:58and the rest Indians.
0:42:07 > 0:42:09And this would have been the main thoroughfare
0:42:09 > 0:42:12- for the British in Kipling's day. - Yes.
0:42:12 > 0:42:15- This is where they rode up and down? - Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.
0:42:15 > 0:42:18The Anglo-Indians who couldn't make it to Shimla in the season
0:42:18 > 0:42:21were dying to know what was happening there
0:42:21 > 0:42:23and Kipling sent regular reports
0:42:23 > 0:42:26on the festivities to the Civil and Military Gazette.
0:42:27 > 0:42:31"This week's list of amusements includes the usual Monday 'pop',
0:42:31 > 0:42:35"a dance at Government House on Wednesday, two nights' theatricals,
0:42:35 > 0:42:39"a variety entertainment at the Gaiety Theatre this afternoon,
0:42:39 > 0:42:41"and the Trade Ball at Benmore tonight."
0:42:46 > 0:42:49Amateur theatricals were a high point of the Shimla season.
0:42:49 > 0:42:51And here at the Gaiety Theatre,
0:42:51 > 0:42:55Kipling appeared in a French farce called A Scrap Of Paper.
0:42:55 > 0:42:59Though, one observer described his performance as "horrid and vulgar".
0:42:59 > 0:43:02I'm sure you do, as far as I'm concerned...
0:43:02 > 0:43:06'Today, the theatre still performs every other play in English.'
0:43:06 > 0:43:09Out of my way, you bedding-department gigolo!
0:43:09 > 0:43:13Squirrel, squirrel! Look what you've done to my squirrel!
0:43:13 > 0:43:14Get out before I call the manager!
0:43:18 > 0:43:21Amateur dramatics played an important role
0:43:21 > 0:43:25in British-Indian life beyond just giving vent to the frustrated and,
0:43:25 > 0:43:29no doubt, misplaced theatrical ambitions of the bored wives.
0:43:29 > 0:43:32Kipling enjoyed acting because it allowed him to get close to women.
0:43:32 > 0:43:36Theatre, whether it was putting on a play in an officers' mess,
0:43:36 > 0:43:39or in a purpose-built venue, like this one in Shimla,
0:43:39 > 0:43:42was really one of the only chances within the confines
0:43:42 > 0:43:45of the Victorian society that the British imposed here
0:43:45 > 0:43:48where men and women could get close for flirting and romance.
0:43:48 > 0:43:51After his first stay in Shimla, Kipling writes...
0:43:52 > 0:43:56"The month was a round of picnics, dances and theatricals and so on.
0:43:56 > 0:43:59"And I flirted with the bottled-up energy of a year on my lips."
0:44:02 > 0:44:04While Shimla had the outward appearance
0:44:04 > 0:44:06of English respectability,
0:44:06 > 0:44:10in fact, it was a hotbed of intrigue and scandal.
0:44:10 > 0:44:12The town was a celebrated destination
0:44:12 > 0:44:16for the "fishing fleet" - girls who had travelled from Britain
0:44:16 > 0:44:18on the lookout for husbands,
0:44:18 > 0:44:21and for its "grass widows" - wives who could misbehave
0:44:21 > 0:44:24while their husbands worked down on the plains.
0:44:25 > 0:44:28Shimla was really full of grass widows.
0:44:28 > 0:44:32Because, anybody who could afford it sent their wife and children,
0:44:32 > 0:44:35they sent them up to the hills so they didn't have to suffer
0:44:35 > 0:44:38the horrible hot weather on the plains.
0:44:38 > 0:44:42And most people were between about 25 and 45
0:44:42 > 0:44:43and when they went up to Shimla,
0:44:43 > 0:44:45there were these attractive young women,
0:44:45 > 0:44:48there were the officers who were coming up on leave,
0:44:48 > 0:44:51they'd come up on three weeks' leave,
0:44:51 > 0:44:52and there they were in this town
0:44:52 > 0:44:55with loads of proximity and husbands not there. You can imagine!
0:44:55 > 0:44:58Lady Reading once described Shimla as a place
0:44:58 > 0:45:01where "every Jack has someone else's Jill".
0:45:21 > 0:45:25The young, unmarried, white, junior members of the administration
0:45:25 > 0:45:28and the military could go and do what is called "poodle-faking" -
0:45:28 > 0:45:31which was to make love to the married wives
0:45:31 > 0:45:33now their husbands are in the plains.
0:45:33 > 0:45:35He had this great phase,
0:45:35 > 0:45:38"duty and red tape" - that's life down on the plains.
0:45:38 > 0:45:41"Picnics and adultery" - that's life up in the hills.
0:45:41 > 0:45:43And there's a huge contrast.
0:45:43 > 0:45:46Standards start to slip when you're up in the hills.
0:45:46 > 0:45:48You can get away with it.
0:45:48 > 0:45:50And Kipling sees it as paradise.
0:45:50 > 0:45:52He says, "This is like Elysium.
0:45:52 > 0:45:55"This is where the gods live. Everything goes here."
0:45:55 > 0:45:57# I am the very model of a modern Major-General
0:45:57 > 0:46:00# I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral... #
0:46:00 > 0:46:03Kipling was able to rub shoulders with the power elite
0:46:03 > 0:46:05of British India at work and at play,
0:46:05 > 0:46:08and the pretensions and the foibles of their world
0:46:08 > 0:46:10would provide fertile material for his fiction.
0:46:13 > 0:46:15At first, he was intoxicated by it,
0:46:15 > 0:46:19describing it as a place of "glamour, wine and witchery".
0:46:24 > 0:46:26The Mall was the place to be seen. And every afternoon,
0:46:26 > 0:46:29Kipling would promenade here with the other Anglo-Indians,
0:46:29 > 0:46:32picking up political and social gossip for the newspaper.
0:46:34 > 0:46:37This is where
0:46:37 > 0:46:39the world and its dog
0:46:39 > 0:46:42came to "eat the air", "hawakhana".
0:46:42 > 0:46:44- Hawakhana, eating the air. - Eating the air.
0:46:44 > 0:46:48- And that was their promenade. - Clean, fresh air.
0:46:49 > 0:46:52Throw in a few flirtations for good measure,
0:46:52 > 0:46:54it would make a good promenade.
0:46:55 > 0:46:58There was even a part of town known as Scandal Point.
0:46:59 > 0:47:03So, this was the central hub of gossip for the whole of Shimla?
0:47:03 > 0:47:06Absolutely. This is where all the townspeople gathered,
0:47:06 > 0:47:07especially the women,
0:47:07 > 0:47:11with a traffic jam of rickshaws all crowding this place,
0:47:11 > 0:47:12exchanging scandal.
0:47:12 > 0:47:16And all these elegantly dressed middle-aged ladies
0:47:16 > 0:47:19trying to figure out who was going to run off with whom,
0:47:19 > 0:47:22who would like to run off with whom.
0:47:22 > 0:47:24And the way Kipling presents it,
0:47:24 > 0:47:27it's not the conception of Victorian society that we have.
0:47:27 > 0:47:30I mean, there was a lot of sexual intrigue.
0:47:30 > 0:47:35It seems much more free than we would imagine these days.
0:47:35 > 0:47:37It most certainly was.
0:47:37 > 0:47:41If anything, Shimla was a steamy place.
0:47:52 > 0:47:54But, after three months of what he called
0:47:54 > 0:47:56"the gay season in the hills",
0:47:56 > 0:47:59Kipling was beginning to see through it.
0:47:59 > 0:48:01Always more comfortable as an outsider,
0:48:01 > 0:48:06he was now turning what he saw into biting, satirical short stories.
0:48:10 > 0:48:13Shimla is the place where people let their hair down,
0:48:13 > 0:48:15but even Rudy Kipling realises
0:48:15 > 0:48:19that, actually, it's a kind of false society.
0:48:19 > 0:48:20It's not really genuine.
0:48:20 > 0:48:23And he very quickly gets jaded by it.
0:48:23 > 0:48:25And it's very fascinating - here's a youngster,
0:48:25 > 0:48:27thought this was going to be paradise,
0:48:27 > 0:48:29but he very quickly turns his pen.
0:48:29 > 0:48:32His pen becomes very waspish,
0:48:32 > 0:48:36and he starts to criticise this society more and more, to the extent
0:48:36 > 0:48:39that the stories he writes about Shimla society are really...
0:48:39 > 0:48:42They're letting the side down terribly.
0:48:42 > 0:48:45"There was a Commissioner in Shimla, in those days.
0:48:45 > 0:48:49"An ugly man. The ugliest man in Asia, with two exceptions.
0:48:49 > 0:48:51"His name was Saggott. Barr-Saggott.
0:48:51 > 0:48:54"Anthony Barr-Saggott and six letters to follow.
0:48:54 > 0:48:57"Departmentally, he was one of the best men
0:48:57 > 0:48:58"the Government of India owned.
0:48:58 > 0:49:02"Socially, he was like unto a blandishing gorilla."
0:49:02 > 0:49:06"Mrs Hauksbee was clever, witty, brilliant
0:49:06 > 0:49:09"and sparkling beyond most of her kind,
0:49:09 > 0:49:13"but possessed of many devils of malice and mischievousness.
0:49:13 > 0:49:15"She could be nice, though, even to her own sex.
0:49:15 > 0:49:17"But that is another story."
0:49:17 > 0:49:22These are very thinly veiled portraits of quite important people.
0:49:22 > 0:49:25- He must've had balls to write as he did about them.- Of steel.
0:49:25 > 0:49:28All of Kipling's little stories are true.
0:49:28 > 0:49:31And I think here it again comes to Kipling as a writer -
0:49:31 > 0:49:36his ability to sort of take off from real-life situations.
0:49:36 > 0:49:40Shimla is perhaps a perfect case in point where he was able to do that.
0:49:42 > 0:49:45Kipling's disillusionment with Shimla comes through
0:49:45 > 0:49:48in many of the satirical short stories of life there
0:49:48 > 0:49:51during the summer season, and they're different in style
0:49:51 > 0:49:54to the other stories he was writing at the time.
0:49:56 > 0:49:59What I think I've understood more clearly since coming out here
0:49:59 > 0:50:02is that Kipling's real genius was in getting close to his subject.
0:50:02 > 0:50:05Perhaps that was because of his grounding as a journalist.
0:50:05 > 0:50:07He writes the common soldier so well
0:50:07 > 0:50:10because he's spent these long hours chatting, drinking beer
0:50:10 > 0:50:12with the soldiers stationed in Lahore.
0:50:12 > 0:50:14He writes the Walled City well
0:50:14 > 0:50:17because he was one of the few Europeans who really explored it.
0:50:17 > 0:50:20And he's able to portray - with a slightly acid tongue -
0:50:20 > 0:50:23the British in Shimla because he was part of that society.
0:50:38 > 0:50:41Many of Kipling's stories were published
0:50:41 > 0:50:44alongside his journalism in the Civil and Military Gazette.
0:50:45 > 0:50:48But it wasn't until 1887, when he was 21,
0:50:48 > 0:50:50that he started grouping them
0:50:50 > 0:50:55with new and more ambitious pieces into a single book.
0:50:56 > 0:50:59Its title - Plain Tales From The Hills - was apposite.
0:50:59 > 0:51:03These were deceptively simple stories that aimed to tell readers
0:51:03 > 0:51:06about life in Anglo-India as it really was.
0:51:13 > 0:51:16Kipling liked to head out of town on horseback,
0:51:16 > 0:51:19visit the rural villages and see the real India.
0:51:19 > 0:51:22One such trip gave him the idea for the short story Lispeth,
0:51:22 > 0:51:25in which a young Englishman falls from his horse
0:51:25 > 0:51:27and is rescued by a beautiful hill girl.
0:51:28 > 0:51:30"When a hill girl grows lovely,
0:51:30 > 0:51:33"she is worth travelling 50 miles over bad ground to look upon.
0:51:35 > 0:51:36"Lispeth had a Greek face,
0:51:36 > 0:51:41"one of those faces people paint so often and see so seldom."
0:51:45 > 0:51:47The hill girl, a convert to Christianity,
0:51:47 > 0:51:49falls passionately in love with the Englishman
0:51:49 > 0:51:51and declares her intention to marry him -
0:51:51 > 0:51:55much to the horror of the missionaries who raised her.
0:51:56 > 0:52:00The betrayal of Lispeth is treated sympathetically by Kipling
0:52:00 > 0:52:03and the English are portrayed as untrustworthy.
0:52:04 > 0:52:07Contrary to the received idea of Kipling as the bigoted Victorian,
0:52:07 > 0:52:10here it is the West that lets down the East.
0:52:19 > 0:52:21Only eight pages long,
0:52:21 > 0:52:25Lispeth is a story that retains its power to unsettle.
0:52:25 > 0:52:28It was a provocative opening to his first book.
0:52:28 > 0:52:31Grouped together, the stories that follow
0:52:31 > 0:52:34of adultery, loneliness and betrayal
0:52:34 > 0:52:37did not add up to a flattering portrait of the Raj.
0:52:41 > 0:52:43I don't think people knew what they were getting.
0:52:43 > 0:52:45In India, they were shocked by what he said.
0:52:45 > 0:52:47There was a sense that he'd let the side down,
0:52:47 > 0:52:49that he shouldn't have published the stories.
0:52:49 > 0:52:51The Viceroy was telling Mrs Kipling,
0:52:51 > 0:52:54"Oh, you really shouldn't have let your son do these stories."
0:52:54 > 0:52:57And I think people were very startled when that book came out
0:52:57 > 0:53:00because they WERE so subversive, they WERE so cynical.
0:53:02 > 0:53:05In describing the realities of Anglo-Indian experience,
0:53:05 > 0:53:09in writing Plain Tales From The Hills, nothing was taboo.
0:53:11 > 0:53:14Kipling knew that some who came to find a new life in India
0:53:14 > 0:53:16found despair instead.
0:53:16 > 0:53:19Suicides were not uncommon, but always covered up.
0:53:26 > 0:53:29In Thrown Away, a young soldier, new to India,
0:53:29 > 0:53:33fails to cope because he doesn't seem to understand that India
0:53:33 > 0:53:36is a country where you shouldn't take anything too seriously.
0:53:39 > 0:53:41After he blows his brains out,
0:53:41 > 0:53:44his senior officer has to bury the body,
0:53:44 > 0:53:46covering up the evidence,
0:53:46 > 0:53:49and pretending to his family back home that he had died of cholera.
0:53:51 > 0:53:54Kipling knew all about what happened to people when they were young
0:53:54 > 0:53:56and new to the country.
0:53:56 > 0:53:59To survive, he seems to be saying you had to live by a new moral code.
0:53:59 > 0:54:02The real India was unfamiliar and threatening -
0:54:02 > 0:54:05not that the fools back home understood that.
0:54:05 > 0:54:09They were fed made-up stories of honour and bravery.
0:54:09 > 0:54:11Thrown Away is one of the few Plain Tales From The Hills
0:54:11 > 0:54:14that was never published in the Civil and Military Gazette,
0:54:14 > 0:54:16and it marks an important change.
0:54:16 > 0:54:19This dark, brilliant story proving Kipling so different
0:54:19 > 0:54:22from the reactionary he's made out to be, was written
0:54:22 > 0:54:23not just for the Anglo-Indians,
0:54:23 > 0:54:26but the armchair imperialists back in Britain.
0:54:32 > 0:54:35Plain Tales didn't make Kipling popular with the British in India
0:54:35 > 0:54:37and, as word about the new stories spread,
0:54:37 > 0:54:41and he grew less respectful towards his hosts,
0:54:41 > 0:54:43his Indian education was coming to an end.
0:54:49 > 0:54:52His proprietor, George Allen, starts to get pretty worried,
0:54:52 > 0:54:55to the extent that, eventually, Kipling is too hot to handle.
0:54:55 > 0:54:58He's being so rude about people like the Viceroy,
0:54:58 > 0:54:59the commander-in-chief,
0:54:59 > 0:55:01British society in general,
0:55:01 > 0:55:03that Allen basically says to him,
0:55:03 > 0:55:06"Look, young Kipling, I think it's time you went to England.
0:55:06 > 0:55:07"We can't handle you here."
0:55:09 > 0:55:11Seven years after he had first arrived,
0:55:11 > 0:55:13Kipling went back to Lahore
0:55:13 > 0:55:15to say goodbye to his family
0:55:15 > 0:55:17and to reflect on an extraordinary seven years.
0:55:21 > 0:55:25"I've had a good time. I've tasted success and the beauty of money.
0:55:25 > 0:55:27"I've mixed with fighters and statesman,
0:55:27 > 0:55:29"administrators and women who control them.
0:55:29 > 0:55:32"It was vivid and lively, and gloomy and savage.
0:55:32 > 0:55:36"I tried to get to know folk from the barrack room and the brothel,
0:55:36 > 0:55:38"to the ballroom and the Viceroy's council.
0:55:38 > 0:55:41"And I have, in a little measure, succeeded.
0:55:41 > 0:55:44"My training has been extensive and peculiar.
0:55:44 > 0:55:47"And now, I'm going to come home to see how it will work."
0:55:56 > 0:55:59Kipling left Lahore on 3rd March, 1889.
0:55:59 > 0:56:01Destined for fame and fortune,
0:56:01 > 0:56:04his reputation would wane with the Empire
0:56:04 > 0:56:07and his politics would alienate later generations.
0:56:07 > 0:56:10But it was the stories that grew out of his experiences here
0:56:10 > 0:56:12in Lahore, and in the foot hills of the Himalayas in Shimla,
0:56:12 > 0:56:15which remain his masterworks -
0:56:15 > 0:56:17works which are far more modern and complex,
0:56:17 > 0:56:20and far more sympathetic to the layers of Indian life,
0:56:20 > 0:56:22than Kipling is usually given credit for.
0:56:24 > 0:56:26Arriving back home in October,
0:56:26 > 0:56:28he found that Britain had changed, too.
0:56:30 > 0:56:33The Empire was more cherished and celebrated than ever.
0:56:33 > 0:56:36And the reading public were fascinated to find out
0:56:36 > 0:56:39what life was really like out in the colonies.
0:56:39 > 0:56:43Kipling found that his Plain Tales were a popular,
0:56:43 > 0:56:45as well as a critical, sensation.
0:56:45 > 0:56:49The eternal outsider had discovered a welcoming audience.
0:56:50 > 0:56:54People said, "Now we have somebody who will tell us about India."
0:56:54 > 0:56:57And there is Oscar Wilde's famous review that,
0:56:57 > 0:57:00when you're reading Plain Tales From The Hills,
0:57:00 > 0:57:04"one feels as if one were sitting under a palm-tree
0:57:04 > 0:57:08"reading by superb flashes of vulgarity."
0:57:08 > 0:57:10SHE CHUCKLES
0:57:10 > 0:57:13But Kipling was the "hottest thing".
0:57:13 > 0:57:16And Kipling was really the first "hottest thing" ever,
0:57:16 > 0:57:21because he arrived in London at a time when mass media
0:57:21 > 0:57:24were really beginning to be developed,
0:57:24 > 0:57:27and so he was the first writer to have a kind of global fame.
0:57:27 > 0:57:31And, I think, anything he wrote, he could publish.
0:57:31 > 0:57:36And publishers were just queueing up to publish his work.
0:57:36 > 0:57:39It was the boldness of his stories which shocked and enthralled
0:57:39 > 0:57:42his British readers and they couldn't get enough.
0:57:44 > 0:57:47Think of Lord Byron saying, "I was the comet of the season!"
0:57:47 > 0:57:49Rudyard Kipling is the comet of the season.
0:57:49 > 0:57:53He astonishes everybody because this is a new kind of realism
0:57:53 > 0:57:55that they haven't known in London
0:57:55 > 0:57:57and he really has an astonishing impact.
0:58:08 > 0:58:12No writer - not Shakespeare, not Dickens -
0:58:12 > 0:58:15has ever enjoyed such fame in their own lifetime.
0:58:17 > 0:58:19After a period in America,
0:58:19 > 0:58:23he was to live out his life here in the Sussex countryside.
0:58:25 > 0:58:28He became the literary lion of the Empire
0:58:28 > 0:58:31as the Empire itself fell into decline.
0:58:31 > 0:58:33And his fame has never waned.
0:58:34 > 0:58:39Kim, his story of an orphaned boy growing up on the streets of Lahore,
0:58:39 > 0:58:42would be his literary masterpiece and win him the Nobel Prize.
0:58:48 > 0:58:52But everything he achieved was founded on his teenage adventures
0:58:52 > 0:58:55as a cub reporter who broke all the rules,
0:58:55 > 0:58:58writing short stories that would change, for ever,
0:58:58 > 0:59:00the way India is imagined.