"Rikki-tikki-tavi," by Rudyard Kipling

In which a mongoose is found by a family, and defends them against the wicked cobras who live in their garden, and in which our narrator thinks you should just be grateful that the humans were the only ones with attempted British accents.



"Rikki-tikki-tavi" was originally published in 1894 in Kipling's The Jungle Book (which, yes, has more than just the Mowgli stories in it), and is now perhaps most familiar to people of recent generations through the 1975 animated version by Chuck Jones. The book, and thus this story was thoroughly illustrated by Rudyard Kipling's father, John Lockwood Kipling. Despite being a short story, Kipling the Elder illustrated it to nearly Denslowian proportions, so all of them are after the jump.

Chapter heading

3:24 - "Rikki looked down between
the boy's collar and neck."

4:11 - "He put his nose into the ink."

4:36 - "Rikki-tikki was awake on the pillow."

4:54 - "He came to breakfast
riding on Teddy's shoulder."

Okay, Mr Kipling the Elder, I understand you had some space to fill, but was it truly necessary to have a second illustration of Rikki-tikki riding on Teddy's shoulder, just from a different angle? Did we genuinely need both the back and the front shot?

6:01 - "'We are very miserable,' said Darzee."

It's interesting to note that Darzee's wife does not have a name, despite the fact that she has rather more impact on the plot than Darzee himself does, though I suppose she doesn't sing while doing so. Nag and Nagaina both get oddly similar names that probably have some Hindi root meaning "cobra" or something, Karait gets a name, Chuchundra gets a name, even Chua the cousin-rat-who-doesn't-actually-appear-and-has-no-effect-on-the-story-whatsoever gets a name, but not Darzee's wife. Though, to be fair, neither of Teddy's parents get a name either.

6:52 - “‘I am Nag,’ said the cobra: ‘Look and be
afraid!’ but at the bottom of his cold heart he was afraid.”

Okay, not that I'm all for preying on baby birds or anything, but cobras gotta eat too, ya know. Predators aren't really all mean and nasty. And while it's just a ploy to clever-girl Rikki-tikki, Nag does make a decent point about how Rikki maybe shouldn't be so high-and-mighty when he goes around eating eggs.

8:12 - “He jumped up in the air, and just
under him whizzed by the head of Nagaina.”

12:47 - “In the dark he ran up against Chuchundra, the muskrat.”

Of course, in the film noir version of "Rikki-tikki-tavi," Chuchundra would be played by Peter Lorre.

17:29 - “Then Rikki-tikki was battered to and fro as a rat is shaken by a dog.”

21:02 - “Darzee’s wife pretends to have a broken wing.”

26:10 - “Nagaina flew down the
path, with Rikki-tikki behind her.”

27:44 - "It is all over."

Thanks for listening! Come back Monday, and we'll start a brand new book.


If you would like to read along, the text can be found at Project Gutenberg, or at the University of Adelaide, which is where I pulled these specific illustrations from. No reading ahead, though!