Gunga Din

"Where I used to spend my timeA-servin’ of ’Er Majesty the Queen,Of all them blackfaced crewThe finest man I knewWas our regimental bhisti, Gunga Din..."'Gunga Din' is a classic poem by Rudyard Kipling, first published in 1890. It is a rhyming narrative from the perspective of a British soldier in British India, which pays homage to the courage of an Indian water carrier, Gunga Din. Its eponymous character is a Bhisti, an Indian water-carrier, who saves the life of the the narrator after he is wounded in battle, only to later be shot and killed. In the final three lines, the soldier regrets the abuse that he dealt to Din and praises him as the better man. The poem was published within the Barrack-Room Ballads, as part of a set of martial poems. The poem is much remembered for its final "You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din".(1865-1936) is often regarded as the unofficial Laureate of the British Empire. Yet his cutting verse and prose reveals a ferociously independent figure, at times violently opposed to the dominant political and literary tendencies of his age. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907 "in consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration which characterize the creations of this world-famous author."

Grade 7-12 Parker's watercolors provide another dimension to this most famous of Kipling's Barrack-Room Ballads, first published in 1890. Its last line, ``You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din,'' is perhaps one of the most oft-quoted in the English language, yet how many have actually digested the whole of this tale of prejudice, brutality, and class consciousness during the Indian Mutiny of 1857? Gunga Din is the despised and much-abused water carrier for a British regiment who bears his lot with quiet dignity until, while saving the life of the narrator, he loses his own. A foreword by Kingsley Amis sets the historical context for the poem, and a map of India is included. Parker's impressionistic watercolors depict the events in a dream-like sequence while he gives more clarity to the beginning and ending pictures of soldiers at a table hearing of the story. Kipling's greatest strengththe colorful rendering of the soldier's dialectmay prove difficult to interpret for today's American students, and one wonders how they will react to such lines as: ``Of all them blackfaced crew/ The finest man I knew/ Was our regimental bhisti, Gunga Din,'' or ``An' for all `is dirty 'ide/ `E was white, clear white, inside/ When `e went to tend the wounded under fire!'' While the message of the poem is anti-prejudice, there is an essential condescension toward another race that is perhaps best left to students of English literature to discuss in Kipling seminars. Connie C. Rockman, The Ferguson Lib . , Stamford, Conn.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.