Kipling Rudyard – The Randomness of Life (news): “How,” I said, “is it better to get to work? – Tell them first things that you and they have seen together. Then talk to them about what you have seen, then what you’ve heard tell them about their battles and kings, horses, devils, elephants and angels, but do not forget to talk to them about love and things similar. There are no better story tellers than the poor; because they are forced every night to put their ear to the ground. ”

In the introduction of this news written between 1884 and 1890 – entitled Life’s Handicap – Kipling announces their content. Indian concubines will be confronted with the legitimate woman, the disappeared will haunt the living, a popular official of the Pashtuns will be replaced, not without revolt, by a Bengali, lost wells will whisper in the ears of the hunter, a city suffocated with heat, at night, you will reveal its mysteries, lost soldiers will become gods, curses will be realized, and many other stories that we let you discover …

They abound with pictures of Kipling India: shaded verandahs, dust of the dry season or Himalayan foothills, tufts of mango or jungle grass, torrential floods and monsoons, inflated corpses drifting along the water, elephants, monkeys , rajahs and maharanés, small people, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, or civil servants and simple soldiers. The author takes a complicit and benevolent look at this humanity that we can say with him, despite their different, bloody or mean: “I met a hundred men on the road to Delhi and they were all my brothers. Certainly, Kipling remains convinced of the civilizing mission of the British Empire, but he is not blind to its inconsistencies and absurdities, to the racism of so many colonials who see only “niggers”, which he denounces. with humor and subtlety.