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The pitiless Moon shows it all … a splash of glittering silver on a house-top almost directly below the mosque Minar. Some poor soul has risen to throw a jar of water over his fevered body; the tinkle of the falling water strikes faintly on the ear. Two or three other men, in far-off corners of the City of Dreadful Night, follow his example, and the water flashes like heliographic signals. A small cloud passes over the face of the Moon, and the city and its inhabitants—clear drawn in black and white before—fade into masses of black and deeper black. |
This is from “The City of Dreadful Night”, collected in Life’s Handicap. Kipling worked as a journalist in Lahore for five years, from the age of sixteen. Here he describes one of his night walks through the old city. |
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