quotes_simla.htm



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…he led the horses below the main road into the lower Simla bazaar – the crowded rabbit -warren that climbs up from the valley to the Town Hall at an angle of forty-five. A man who knows his way there can defy all the police of India’s summer capital; so cunningly does verandah communicate with verandah, alley-way with alley-way, and bolt-hole with bolt-hole….

  

This is from Kim.

Kim has spent some time at school at St Xavier’s College, learning how to be a Sahib, but he has already been marked down as a future recruit to the Great Game of spying for the Goverment of India against its enemies, on the borders and in the Native States. He has come to Simla, in the holidays, for training with Lurgan Sahib, ‘healer of sick pearls’ and spymaster extraordinary.