Punjabi Quotes in Kim
Though he was burned black as any native; though he spoke the vernacular by preference, and his mother-tongue in a clipped uncertain singsong; though he consorted on terms of perfect equality with the small boys of the bazar; Kim was white – a poor white of the very poorest.
‘Is he by chance’ – he lowered his voice – ‘one of us?’
‘What is this talk of us, Sahib?’ Mahbub Ali returned, in the tone he used towards Europeans. ‘I am a Pathan, thou art a Sahib and the son of a Sahib. Lurgan Sahib has a shop among the European shops. All Simla knows it. Ask there… and, Friend of all the World, he is one to be obeyed to the last wink of his eyelashes. Men say he does magic, but that should not touch thee. Go up the hill and ask. Here begins the Great Game.’
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He was a Sahib in that he wore Sahib’s clothes; the accent of his Urdu, the intonation of his English, showed that he was anything but a Sahib. He seemed to understand what moved in Kim’s mind ere the boy opened his mouth, and he took no pains to explain himself as did Father Victor or the Lucknow masters. Sweetest of all – he treated Kim as an equal on the Asiatic side.
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Punjabi Term Timeline in Kim
