At the beginning of the story, Purun is at the height of his social success, holding honorary degrees, acquiring "millions of money," [i] and is as finely Englished as any Indian man could ever be. Those things, however, do not make Purun happy and he sets forth on a personal pilgrimage, on a journey where no paved roads follow, where "position, palace, and power" [ii] mean nothing. He ends his life as "far as the affair's of the world [go]." [iii]
Purun trades his finest clothing for the "ochre-coloured dress of a Sunnyassi (holy man)." [iv] Barefoot and poor, Purun wanders India, living on the generosity of random villagers or other holy men willing to share sustenance, and sleeps on an antelope skin. This is how he humbly becomes Purun Bhagat.
I, reading this story in a physical construction of the church of reason, housed by walls of stone interlaced with electricity and internet, cannot help feeling that Purun has already lived one life, the enviable life of financial and social successes. But Purun willingly renounces his throne; he "let those things go, as a man drops the cloak he no longer needs." [iv] By comparing the dismissal of riches to the perfunctory removal of a cloak or sweater in excess heat, Kipling demonstrates Purun's newly founded and genuine disinterest for society and wealth. In using the word "cloak", Kipling suggests that society, driven by the acquisition of wealth or land or anything which may be categorized as good, acts like a type of cloak and thus may be concealing something or some part of existence. This idea puts to doubt the reader's previously conceived notions of life and purpose. It is a good deal of work filling an imaginary vault with money; one could spend all his life doing it, so it is better to know now, rather than later, if such a struggle is even worth pursuing.
(Purun visiting and connecting with animals) [ix]
Later in the story, Purun finds a semi-permanent residence behind a shrine shouldered on the side of a mountain that overlooks a small village. There, as he has lived since his second, simple life, he relies on the townspeople to feed him. The scene where the "wild things" (animals) come to visit Purun and he is able to communicate with them via a "love that knows but cannot understand," [v] recalls the ancient philosophy of Ahimsa, positive cosmic force of interconnection, which harmoniously binds all life the way Purun and the forest's animals are connected. Purun makes friends with monkeys, deers, and even bears. He shares his food, fire, and bed with them. The animals are more his companions than the rotating round of villagers that silently bring up food.
Many years go by and at the end of the story, it is white-haired Purun's relationship and understanding of animals that saves the village from an impending mud-slide only the animals' "instincts" can detect. The physical effort, to speedily notify the village and help them escape to the other side of the mountain, is, however, too much for Puran to endure. After the townspeople are led to safety, Purun dies in the company of his dear brethren (dear meant both as a "four-legged animal" and "one held in tender esteem"), "sitting cross-legged, his back against a tree, his crutch under his armpit, and his face turned to the north-east." [vi] I could not help thinking about Buddha, as he is often depicted, in his respective cross-legged position, and how Purun's physical death could no more kill him than it killed the first Buddha, Siddhartha. Instead, Purun, like Buddha, is immortalized by his connection to animals and man. The harmony he obtained, simply too beautiful to merely end in death, affected too many villagers, through multiple generations, to ever be forgotten.
(a cross-legged Buddha or possibly Purun) [x]
Rudyard Kipling's story displays a fascinating Derrida-like deconstruction of the self, as witnessed in Purun, who must have had philosophical scepticisms about the Church of Reason/Academia before choosing to end his formerly elite life.
Further more, Purun, after questioning himself and the world to the point of distrust, must have used the sympathetic imagination to connect with the animals he later comes to understand. He seems to transcend the physical space between him and the "wild things", gaining understanding of the creatures by isolating their pervasive similarities to humans. Anyone invoking the sympathetic imagination must ask: How am I like this animal? Do we have shared desires? What weaknesses do we share? What comforts both the animal and me? Asking and asking, answering and answering until in that "extraordinary affinity, or sympathy, [no] flavour of grossness" [vii] in life remains, and we discover, and perhaps rediscover, how petty the differences between humans and animals are and how similarly we yearn.
Conclusively, I ask myself, what truth did I get from this fiction?
As sensitive as I am to the notion that the human heart may be corrupted by the kindest dishonesties--and to the possibility that this story, poetic and sympathetic, may appeal only to my feelings and not to what's logical, it does feel real. That is all I know to be true, what I feel.
After writing this though, I feel like Rikki (from Rudyard's Rikki Tikki Tavi) as "he climbed up in the big man's lap to see how writing was done." [viii] Curious, but lost and afraid, the practice of proper word choice, sure looks like fun.
[i] Rudyard Kipling, The Miracle of Purun Bhagat, http://www.p-synd.com/wild/purunbhagat.htm
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[vii] Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure, pg. 253
[viii] Rudyard Kipling, Rikki Tikki Tavi, http://www.p-synd.com/wild/rikkitikkitavi.htm
[ix] http://www.p-synd.com/wild/pb3big.jpg
[x] http://www.mysacredfig.com/Images/Buddha%20under%20Tree.jpg
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