Stephen Alter’s ‘The Greatest Game’ reimagines Kim, wiser and older

This is a book that was waiting to be written. While it isn’t the first time that Rudyard Kipling’s celebrated 1901 novel ‘Kim’ has inspired another literary work, Stephen Alter’s extended narrative should certainly rank among the best and the most lushly imagined of these sequels.

A superb blend of historical fiction, adventure, intrigue and travel, ‘The Greatest Game’ presents Kipling’s eponymous teenager as a grown-up man in his sixties, who has become a celebrated name in the world of colonial spying. The title is an obvious, if playful, allusion to the ‘Great Game’, the 19th century geopolitical conflict between the Russian and British empires for power and control that formed the fulcrum of the original work. However, in Alter’s book, primarily set in the year of India’s Independence, the enemy comes not from the outside but from within the British, bearing fascist allegiances and a desire to stall the transference of power to the Indians by hatching a fatal conspiracy against Nehru.

Whereas ‘Kim’ was narrated in the third-person, Alter’s storytelling deploys the first-person narrative for the most part, allowing the reader to dwell first-hand in the exceptionally sharp if existentially tormented mind of the aged hero. Beginning in the March of 1947 and stretching right up to the days after Independence, ‘The Greatest Game’ artfully evokes an era gone by, even as it never loses sight of the violence and vindictiveness that came to accompany the birth of the two nations. This makes it not only a sophisticated addition to the category of ‘Raj novels’ but also, in a minor manner, to ‘Partition novels’. Alter clearly brings his vast experience as a writer of fiction and non-fiction to a skillful effect as he ushers his hero into the mosaic of landscapes constituting the subcontinent.

This reviewer couldn’t help wondering how much fun must the author have had in exploring these geographies — such is the satisfaction afforded by his prose.

Just like Kipling, Alter also begins his story in Lahore, where the sexagenarian Kim is tasked with gaining information about the British officer Sir Denys Bromley-Pugh’s sinister plans of detonating a bomb at a Congress rally. After veering through the many lanes of Lahore, this job takes Kim to Delhi via a long train ride, and finally to ‘Simla’ (now Shimla) and the upper Himalayas. Along the way, our spy hero dons numerous disguises “easily and effortlessly”, so that at one moment he is a beggar, at another a Sikh lawyer, and at yet others a Hindu merchant, a Muslim horse trader, and a British armyman. These personas gain their true heft as he mingles with a vast cast of characters, all delightfully carved and utterly memorable.

We first meet the courtesan Champa whose status as a societal ‘outsider’ is poignantly paralleled by Kim’s own position as a marginal Irish-born. Then comes MacNeil (Kim’s senior), the secret service ally Srinivas, the female spy-partner of yore Princess Anastasia, the Muslim poet-linguist Yaqzan, the secret service head Ulysses, and the repugnant group of men headed by Bromley-Pugh himself.

Real-world characters like Nicholas Roerich and Louis Mountbatten also make their mark in a small fashion. The long conversational dialogues among these and other people truly comprise the heart of the book, as it is there that the many meanings of “Friend of the World” fully come into play (the appellation first designated by Kipling to account for Kim’s capacity to befriend and straddle different people and places).

Smatterings of Hindustani and quotes from Mir, Ghalib and Tennyson weave their way in too, while social mores and precise material details from the past (especially those related to automobiles and weapons) further add to the period appeal.

But perhaps the biggest strength of this book lies in furnishing the complex character of Kim himself, who, while partaking all of these atmospherics and acting out his spy role dutifully, also comes to demonstrate a softer, philosophical and ambiguous side. There is a touching scene where he helps the riot-wounded Yaqzan perform his prayers by shepherding him into an appropriate position. Then there is his acknowledgement of the “lyricism” of “Ambala” whose colonial English spelling “Umballa” he finds “inelegant”, preferring instead how it appears in the Urdu script.

Characters and episodes from Kipling’s novel frequently punctuate the narration through the prism of memory, which intrinsically makes this book a story about time.

In the final leap, as intrigue and sinister build to their apogee, Alter’s sequel transforms into a compelling navigation of identity and belonging, where Kim, who is “neither a native nor a sahib”, eventually finds himself as a product and parcel of history. While the novel confidently stands alone as a wonderful read in itself, it may also inspire many of us to go back to the pleasures of the original inspiration.

— The reviewer is a historian, artist and cultural critic from Shimla

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