Rikki Tikki Tavi: a summary
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“Rikki Tikki Tavi” is an adventure story by Rudyard Kipling (Bombay, 1865 – London, 1936). Released in November 1893 in the magazines “Pall Mall Magazine” and “St. Nicholas Magazine”, was reissued the following year in the collection “The Jungle Book”. With enthusiasm as a kid I read “Rikki Tikki Tavi”, today with the same enthusiasm I have reread the Italian translation and the original text. Since the story “Rikki Tikki Tavi” is too long for a blog, I made a summary in Italian, but integrally bringing the paragraphs which to me seemed more beautiful or more important.
Then I published the story even in the original language, translating the summary and instead bringing those paragraphs just like R. Kipling wrote them. Read them! Read and understand Kipling on the original texts is wonderful! And it’s also a great way to learn English.
At the end of this article I have listed a nice video, which lasts about 24 ‘, produced by Chuck Jones, who sees among the performers also Orson Welles, narrator, and voice actor also voices of Nag and Chuchundra.
Rikki moving house.
At the hole where he went in Red-Eye called to Wrinkle-Skin. Hear what little Red-Eye saith: “Nag, come up and dance with death!”
Eye to eye and head to head, (Keep the measure, Nag.) This shall end when one is dead; (At thy pleasure, Nag.) Turn for turn and twist for twist- (Run and hide thee, Nag.) Hah! The hooded Death has missed! (Woe betide thee, Nag!)
This is the story of the great war that Rikki-tikki-tavi fought single-handed, through the bath-rooms of the big bungalow in Segowlee cantonment. Darzee, the tailor-bird, helped him, and Chuchundra, the musk-rat, who never comes out into the middle of the floor, but always creeps round by the wall, gave him advice; but Rikki-tikki did the real fighting.
Rikki Tikki Tavi was a very nice young mongoose, named for its distinctive war cry – Riktiktikkitikkitehk! – When sneaking through the tall grass. One day Rikki Tikki (so d ‘now on we will call it), swept away from his den – where he lived with his father and mother – in a downpour of summer, and ended up passed out in the ditch semiaffogato an Indian bungalow inhabited by whites .
When he revived, he was lying in the hot sun on the middle of a garden path, very draggled indeed, and a small boy was saying: “Here’s a dead mongoose. Let’s have a funeral.”
“No,” said his mother; “let’s take him in and dry him. Perhaps he isn’t really dead.”
They took him into the house, and a big man picked him up between his finger and thumb, and said he was not dead but half choked; so they wrapped him in cotton-wool, and warmed him, and he opened his eyes and sneezed.
“Now,” said the big man (he was an Englishman who had just moved into the bungalow); “don’t frighten him, and we’ll see what he’ll do.”
“No,” said his mother; “let’s take him in and dry him. Perhaps he isn’t really dead.”
They took him into the house, and a big man picked him up between his finger and thumb, and said he was not dead but half choked; so they wrapped him in cotton-wool, and warmed him, and he opened his eyes and sneezed.
“Now,” said the big man (he was an Englishman who had just moved into the bungalow); “don’t frighten him, and we’ll see what he’ll do.”
The explorations of Rikki.
It is the hardest thing in the world to frighten a mongoose, because he is eaten up from nose to tail with curiosity. The motto of all the mongoose family is “Run and find out”; and Rikki-tikki was a true mongoose. He looked at the cotton-wool, decided that it was not good to eat, ran all around the table, sat up and put his fur in order, scratched himself, and jumped on the small boy’s shoulder.
“Don’t be frightened, Teddy,” said his father. “That’s his way of making friends.”
“Ouch! He’s tickling under my chin,” said Teddy.
Rikki Tikki pleased Teddy and his parents, and he soon became the mascot of the house, but also the house and its owners were very popular in Rikki Tikki, who immediately decided not to go away, because there were more things in the house to discover of how many his family could find out in a lifetime. He spent the whole day wandering around the house, experimenting, observing, while having fun and enjoying the hosts, in a swirl of fun and cheerful situations, and sometimes even dangerous (… almost he drowned herself in the bath , and he scalded his nose looking too closely at the lit cigar of big man, etc).
Teddy’s mother and father came in, the last thing, to look at their boy, and Rikki-tikki was awake on the pillow. “I don’t like that,” said Teddy’s mother; “he may bite the child.” “He’ll do no such thing,” said the father. “Teddy’s safer with that little beast than if he had a bloodhound to watch him. If a snake came into the nursery now — ”
But Teddy’s mother wouldn’t think of anything so awful.
Rikki Tikki, well educated by her mother who had lived in the house of General, in Segowlee, was brilliantly realizing his dream of becoming a domestic mongoose, to have so many rooms where you can run around, and a large and beautiful garden, with lots of interesting people from know. In fact, running up and down the garden, he heard plaintive voices that came out of a bush of thorns
It was Darzee, the tailor-bird, and his wife. They had made a beautiful nest by pulling two big leaves together and stitching them up the edges with fibres, and had filled the hollow with cotton and downy fluff. The nest swayed to and fro, as they sat on the rim and cried.
“What is the matter?” asked Rikki-tikki.
“We are very miserable,” said Darzee. “One of our babies fell out of the nest yesterday, and Nag ate him.”
“H’m!” said Rikki-tikki, “that is very sad — but I am a stranger here. Who is Nag?”
Rikki meets Nag and Nagaina.
Darzee and his wife only cowered down in the nest without answering, for from the thick grass at the foot of the bush there came a low hiss — a horrid cold sound that made Rikki-tikki jump back two clear feet. Then inch by inch out of the grass rose up the head and spread hood of Nag, the big black cobra, and he was five feet long from tongue to tail. When he had lifted one-third of himself clear of the ground, he stayed balancing to and fro exactly as a dandelion-tuft balances in the wind, and he looked at Rikki-tikki with the wicked snake’s eyes that never change their expression, whatever the snake may be thinking of.
“Who is Nag?” said he. ”I am Nag. The great god Brahm put his mark upon all our people when the first cobra spread his hood to keep the sun off Brahm as he slept. Look, and be afraid!”
He spread out his hood more than ever, and Rikki-tikki saw the spectacle-mark on the back of it that looks exactly like the eye part of a hook-and-eye fastening. He was afraid for the minute; but it is impossible for a mongoose to stay frightened for any length of time, and though Rikki-tikki had never met a live cobra before, his mother had fed him on dead ones, and he knew that all a grown mongoose’s business in life was to fight and eat snakes. Nag knew that too, and at the bottom of his cold heart he was afraid.
“Well,” said Rikki-tikki, and his tail began to fluff up again, “marks or no marks, do you think it is right for you to eat fledglings out of a nest?”
Just for a moment Rikki Tikki was afraid, but then prevailed the instinct of his race, which is to hunt for snakes and to devour them. Even Nag knew it, and the bottom of his cold heart he was afraid. And while Nagaina, his wicked wife, creeping quietly behind Rikki Tikki to attack by surprise, Nag tried to distract Rikki with conciliatory phrases.
“Let us talk,” he said. “You eat eggs. Why should not I eat birds?”
“Behind you! Look behind you!” sang Darzee.
Rikki-tikki knew better than to waste time in staring. He jumped up in the air as high as he could go, and just under him whizzed by the head of Nagaina, Nag’s wicked wife. She had crept up behind him as he was talking, to make an end of him; and he heard her savage hiss as the stroke missed. He came down almost across her back, and if he had been an old mongoose he would have know that then was the time to break her back with one bite; but he was afraid of the terrible lashing return-stroke of the cobra. He bit, indeed, but did not bite long enough, and he jumped clear of the whisking tail, leaving Nagaina torn and angry.
Rikki Tikki was very angry and was ready to fight back, but Nagaina, after threatening Darzee, along with Nag disappeared behind the tall grass.
After Rikki Tikki reflected long. What had happened had now become a serious business for him in narrow terms, victory was only a matter of quickness of eye and legs – the burst of the cobra against the leap of mongoose. But if you wanted to save Teddy – which he was extremely fond of – and his parents, consequently he needed a strategy. He would have thought, but for the moment, happy and confident to have dodged a blow from behind, waited Teddy running down the avenue to caress him.
