LIFE'S HANDICAP

Being Stories of Mine Own People

By Rudyard Kipling

1915


TO
E.K.R.
FROM
R.K.
1887-89
C.M.G.




PREFACE

In Northern India stood a monastery called The Chubara of Dhunni Bhagat.
No one remembered who or what Dhunni Bhagat had been. He had lived his
life, made a little money and spent it all, as every good Hindu should
do, on a work of piety--the Chubara. That was full of brick cells, gaily
painted with the figures of Gods and kings and elephants, where worn-out
priests could sit and meditate on the latter end of things; the paths
were brick paved, and the naked feet of thousands had worn them into
gutters. Clumps of mangoes sprouted from between the bricks; great pipal
trees overhung the well-windlass that whined all day; and hosts of