Remembering Kipling

I didn't start out the day remembering Kipling.  But I opened my newsfeed and there were all sorts of terrifying -- especially so if you live in earthquake-prone southern California -- pictures of an earthquake in Bangkok.  Reading a little further revealed that, although strong shocks were felt in Bangkok, the quake was centered in Myanmar.

"Myanmar?" I hear you ask.  Turns out they meant Burma.  Why Burma isn't called Burma any more I couldn't say.  I don't even know why Bombay isn't Bombay or Ceylon isn't Ceylon.  Although Ceylon tea is apparently still Ceylon tea.

Where was I?  Oh, yes:  earthquake in Burma.   And not just Burma, but centered in Mandalay.

Mandalay!  And if almost-teenaged you ever spent a dollar* of your hard-gotten savings on "Barrack-Room Ballads and Other Poems" you will know how Kipling came into the picture.

I used to have whole pages of Barrack-Room Ballads memorized.  These days all I could remember of "Mandalay" was:

Come you back to Mandalay,

Where the old Flotilla lay:

Can't you hear their paddles chunkin',

from Rangoon to Mandalay?

On the Road to Mandalay,

Where the flyin'-fishes play,

And the dawn comes up like thunder outta

China 'crost the Bay!

And there was something about the old Moulmein Pagoda and a Burmese girl being "a neater, sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land".

Ah, the memory isn't what it used to be.  In fact, it may never have been what it used to be.

And somewhere in this orgy of poetic nostalgia,  I think a prayer or two for the victims of the latest earthquake wouldn't go amiss.

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*By "a dollar", we are, of course, referring to a 1950s dollar, which dollar could buy you four paperback Agatha Christies.  Or you could take it to the market and buy a loaf of bread, some milk, a jar of jam and have change.  Nothing like the 2025 dollar, which even the Dollar Store isn't much interested in any more.