Something I failed to notice

I spent most part of yesterday reading about Edward Said and Mahmoud Darwish, the most prominent of Palestinian thinkers and poets respectively. One curious thing I noticed was that Rudyard Kipling's 1989 novel Kim which is considered one of Kipling's rare work on adult life had an introduction and was edited by Said.

I have been reading Kim at least twice for the past nine summers. I found the book ten years ago, among the debris left by one of our seniors , when he departed the residential school we were part of. I developed an instant liking for the book. It was in ways different from what one would associate with Kipling. The adventures that the world offered to the young Kim, the way he took on those adventures and his pure unadulterated longing for freedom had the adolescent in me captivated, time again and again. I took the book home for summer vacations and as there were not much books around at home, I dived back to Kim's world again anad again. It should be somewhere inside a cupboard back home.

I never read the introduction of Kim. (To be honest, I dont remember reading the Introduction of any book for that matter !). And hence I never noticed that Edward Said had edited it and written the Introduction. Kim may not become another novel in my perspective, just because Edward Said had a contribution, but I will read the Introduction from nowon, siply because Edward Said wrote it.

I hope the old book will still be there, when I go home from college sometime this week for what may be my last proper summer vacation.