Sahib Term Analysis

Oh, it is true. I knew it since my birth, but he could only find it out by rending the amulet from my neck and reading all the papers. He thinks that once a Sahib is always a Sahib, and between them they purpose to keep me in this Regiment or to send me to a madrissah [a school].

‘Hai Mai! I go from one place to another as it might be a kickball. It is my Kismet. No man can escape his Kismet. But I am to pray to Bibi Miriam, and I am a Sahib.’ He looked at his boots ruefully. ‘No; I am Kim. This is the great world, and I am only Kim. Who is Kim?’ He considered his own identity, a thing he had never done before, till his head swam. He was one insignificant person in all this roaring whirl of India, going southward to he knew not what fate.

0110

‘My order is to take thee to the school.’ The driver used the ‘thou,’ which is rudeness when applied to a white man. In the clearest and most fluent vernacular Kim pointed out his error, climbed on to the box-seat, and perfect understanding established, drove for a couple of hours up and down, estimating, comparing, and enjoying.

0100

It was absurd that a man of his position should take an interest in a little country-bred vagabond; but the Colonel remembered the conversation in the train, and often in the past few months had caught himself thinking of the queer, silent, self-possessed boy. His evasion, of course, was the height of insolence, but it argued some resource and nerve.

1000

‘In the madrissah I will be a Sahib. But when the madrissah is shut, then must I be free and go among my people. Otherwise I die!’

‘And who are thy people, Friend of all the World?’

‘This great and beautiful land,’ said Kim, waving his paw around the little clay-walled room where the oil lamp in its niche burned heavily through the tobacco-smoke.

1100

‘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.’

0100

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.

1100

If permission be refused to go and come as he chooses, he will make light of the refusal. Then who is to catch him? Colonel Sahib, only once in a thousand years is a horse born so well fitted for the game as this our colt. And we need men.

1100

‘Thy Gods are lies; thy works are lies; thy words are lies. There are no gods under all the Heavens. I know it… But for a while I thought it was my Sahib come back, and he was my God.’

0001

‘Thou hast said there is neither black nor white. Why plague me with this talk, Holy One? Let me rub the other foot. It vexes me. I am not a Sahib. I am thy chela, and my head is heavy on my shoulders.’

1100