If you are a Kipling/Kim fan, you won't need any other hint. If you don't know who was Lurgan Sahib, just read on ... -- Harshawardhan, a die-hard Kim fanatic In the oasis David Morphet on a Kipling discovery Saturday December 31, 2005 The Guardian Snipped from http://books.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,16488,1675395,00.html In the melée of Bombay, we would never have found the cemetery on our own. With the three of us squashed into a tiny auto-rickshaw, we threaded past endless bazaars, shrines, factories, half-dug drains and half-made roads, until at last we came to a pair of iron gates painted a lurid green. Beyond them was the oasis of "Sewree Christian Cemetery" - several acres of calm in Bombay's cacophonous surroundings. We were conducted down rows of monuments commemorating expatriates dating back to the reign of Queen Victoria. --- "And by the way, the very next grave is that of Lurgan Sahib." "But," I said, "Lurgan Sahib was a fictional character." "Ah, but closely based on the man who lies here," came the reply. We examined the flat white marble slab. It recorded the death in Bombay in 1921 of Mr AM Jacob of Simla, who had been born (no date given) "at Diarbekir - Turkey". That was all. At one point, Jacob had become rich through his trade in precious stones, but a court case involving sale of a diamond to the Nizam of Hyderabad had ruined him and he died in poverty. In the book, Kim tries without success to discover who Lurgan really was. Jacob's precise services to the Raj are still unknown. Nor has the curio shop in Simla been identified. Mysteries remain. [SNIP] ========= ----- Harshawardhan_Bosham Nimkhedkar Nagpur, India