As Walt Disney is set to release the film "The Jungle Book" while a British film "Jungle Book: Origins" will also be released this year, Caroline Hendrie of Mail Online visited the house of the book's author, Rudyard Kipling in India.
This year is the 150th anniversary of the death of Rudyard Kipling who has penned different books that includes "The Jungle Book," " Captains Courageous," "Just So Stories," "If" and "Gunga Din" according to The Quint. But there are no huge celebrations or a flower of garlands for Kipling despite the occasion. As a matter of fact, even his house is left forgotten.
The house has peeling paint and rotten wooden balconies where birds and bats are seen. The bungalow is dilapidated and tarnished bronze is seen in the plinth of its porch. But the house in the neglected bungalow in Mumbai, India has a plaque that says "Rudyard Kipling, son of Lockwood Kipling, first dean of Sir JJ School of Art, was born here on December 30, 1865."
The three-storey early childhood home of the Nobel Prize for Literature winner in 1907 was left to decay because of "Kipling's pro-imperial attitudes that make him a controversial figure in India."
The home is visited only by a few tourists since the bungalow has locked gates and there is even a "No Entry" sign. But it was Insight Vacations who brought Hendrie to the place since they specialize in taking groups to locked places that are merely for "exclusive insights."
Near the house, Hendrie and his tour guides spotted a tiger which appears to be a real like Shere Khan from Jungle Book. The area is surrounded by animals which must have inspired the writer to pen the famous story. It is Kipling's writers that have made India beautiful and intriguing at the same time to the eyes of its readers because he passionately wrote about the place.