Reunion with Sandokán within the mutiny of the Cipayos | Culture | EUROtoday

One of my most valuable possessions is a e book devoted by Sandokán. Ok, the agency will not be, sadly, of the genuine Tiger of Malaysia, which might be troublesome as a result of Salgari invented the character – though in his memoirs, revealed in Renaissance (2012) by that nice Sandokanista who’s Fernando Savater, the Italian author He desires to imagine that he met him and that the pirate even provided him the command of certainly one of his Prague-. No, my devoted e book, by intercession of the type Spanish editor, Enrique Larrea, is Stories that I need to inform (Amok Ediciones, 2023), by Kabir Bedi, through which the actor who has greatest embodied Sandok (“Sandokan, Sandokan / Yellow the sun the strength gives me”) He tells his life neatly and with some couple vanity to the fierce prince of the dethroned prince: as he will remember, Sandokan was expelled by the English from his kingdom of Muluder, on the northern coast of Borneo, and bound to an existence of pirate with capital with capital In the rugged Mompram.

Anyway, be it with Kabir Bedi’s features (which by the way confesses in his autobiography not to have read his character’s novels before embodying him on the screen) or Steve Reeves, or Ray Danton, or the ones you put when you read His adventures, returning to Sandokan, Mompracem and Salgari is like returning home. To a world of adventures and things that really matter, how to conquer a love there to dispens: “Do you want to be mine? I will do the queen of these seas, the queen of Malaysia! To a word of yours, three hundred men, more fierce than the tigers, who do not fear lead, or steel, the states of Borneo will emerge and invade to offer you a throne. ” Yes, I know that today he is no longer linked, as Sandokan did in The Mompram tigersbut, oh, who could devote his time to court to the pearl of Labuán, to avenge affronts, to face, kriss In hand, to Rajá Blanco James Brooke (one of whose descendants, by the way, says Kabir Bedi that was found in the raffles bar of Singapore), to the panther of the probe, to the pythons, to the leopard of Sarawak (Charles Brooke, James’s nephew); who could be “courageous and highly effective and horrible just like the hurricanes that stir the oceans” …

In the meantime (and the view that making a hole in Mompracem is difficult), I have read an adventure of Sandokan that was pending, The two rivalsin an edition of 1955 of Editorial Molino that looks in the lid the beautiful and evocative illustration of a young woman with a sari armed with a Parangthe Malay machete, and a tiger. She is, of course, Surama, La Bayadera (actually princess of Assam), the beloved of the Portuguese Yañez de Gomera, the faithful comrade of Sandokán, and the feline is Darma, The tiger of Tremal-Naik, the famous hunter of beasts and snakes of the sundarbans protagonist of The mysteries of the black jungle (1895) and that will link their adventures to those of Sandokán, who had started in The Mompram tigers (1900), in The pirates of the Malaysia (where the two plot lines come together). The truth is that Salgari’s literary production is quite straight. The man – surrounded by his ruthless editors, who led him to suicide – wrote to piecework, published many stories for deliveries and new versions of the novels, and sometimes confused and mixed episodes and characters. He also had some herpetological carelessness such as putting rattle snakes in Bengal ! “, Or my favourite:” The probabilities of salvation are not many, “the Malaysian replied melancholicly.”

Actually, The two rivals is the second part of The two tigers (1904), an arbitrary division that was made here of the novel (the fourth of the 11 of the cycle Pirates of Malaysia). In history, we have Sandokan (more Yáñez and another troop) and tremal-naik in India, where, following events of The mysteries of the black jungleSandokán helps the Hindu hunter to rescue his daughter, Damna, from the hands of the Thugs, the fearsome historical sect of strangulators who worshiped the goddess Kali and with whom Salgari had a real fixation. Sandokán and their pirates – who hate British colonial imperialism that has turned them into pariah – are transformed here paradoxically into specific allies of the English in the struggle to eradicate the Thugs, one of the great enemies of the Indian of the Raj. To the Thugs who really eliminated them, in 1839, it was a British Old British officer of ours, William Henry Sleeman (who by the way also excavated dinosaur fossils and investigated cases of wolf children, which inspired Kipling his Mowgli). That Salgari passes it through the lining and makes it Sandokán who loads the stranglerexterminating them as rats in the underground galleries of their sinister temple (“The Pagoda de los Thugs”) in Raimangal, in the black jungle of the Sunderbunds, in the Gulf of Bengal. The writer gets out of the sleeve that strangulators smeared with coconut oil “to have the ability to drain between the palms of the adversaries”: something that sounds less to thugs than to tantric sex.

The two rivals (and the two tigers) has its explanation that Sandokán, the Tigre de Malaysia, faces Suyodhana, the evil and elusive (with or without coconut oil) leader of the Thugs, the tiger of India , obvious inspiration of the ram of Indiana Jones and the cursed temple. The final fight, with echoes of that of two other great rivals, the Julesvernians Miguel Strogoff and Iván Ogareff, takes place in Delhi in the middle of the city for the British army during the famous riot of the cipayos!, The uprising that fired fire India in 1857. Salgari, and this is an added attraction of the novel (which also has an Eco Conradian when traveling Sandokán to Patna, the Indian city from which the ship of Lord Jim), offers an unusual vision of insurrection, with the pirate and his friends passing discreetly through the middle and the surviving Thugs putting their frightful trade at the service of the riot. The author, who obviously did the homework, explains that the native regiments, scandalized when running the voice that the English gave rifle cartridges held with cow fat to the Hindu soldiers and with pork fat to the Mohammedans, have killed their Officers and Europeans in cities such as Cawnpore, Lucknow and Merut; That one of the leaders of the revolt is “the brave and exquisite Raní of Yanshie” (Jhansi), and that the rebels have put a descendant of the great Mogol dynasty (the octogenarian Bahadur Shah II) on the throne. It does not hide the terrifying acts of the insurgents but underlines the bloody repression and revenge of the English (as in the killings when recovering Delhi), “unworthy of civilized people and much less Europeans” (!). It must be remembered that the British dispatched 40 mutiny in Peshawar by tie them to the mouth of the cannons and shoot the pieces; It is true that it was a form of execution Old Mughal style.

The historical episode of Indian Mutiny, which meant a serious danger to the British domination of India, is not in any case that the novelist is interested. What is going to Salgari is the adventure of Sandokán and his comrades fighting to the lad hawk; It is interested The persecution of the great priest of Kali escaped, and the fierce final fight of the two tigers.

But this has not been my only raid in Salgari these days. I have read too (jumping many duties and many literary novelties of great ejundia), In the mountains of Atlas, A 1907 novel (recovered by the attic of the books in 2019) in which Sandokán and the Tigers of Mompracem do not come out but it is about the foreign legion! On the properties of Beautiful gesture, The Veronese author also gives us, as in the cycle of Pirates of Malaysiaa story in which it is demystified to colonial power. The legion of the novel is not the space of heroism, adventure and redemption of Fort Zinderneuf but the unhealthy and corrupt world of bled (Disciplinary Company) of Ain-Taiba, in Algeria. From there you can only escape. And it is what the protagonist does, a Hungarian count (!!), Michele Cernazé, ruined by the game, who deserts legionary After marrying in secret with the beautiful Beduina Afza, the Rayo del Atlas. The canallesque and registered commander of the bledto which Salgari names by his range, marshalthat the Spanish edition translates with the superlative “Marshal” when in reality it is a high grade non -commissioner, the equivalent of a brigade. Good and bad sergeants, Spain, Morabitos, Sanusíes and Las Cabilas del Atlas, armed with long springards. There are also Meharis (Veloce Dromedarios, not cars), Panthers, Lions, Chacales, Hienas and Snakes. Come on, to pass it great.

Kabir Bedy writes in his memoirs that though he unleashed the insanity on his tour of Italy with In Sandokan, The most emotional second was visiting Salgari’s home subsequent to the Po in Turin. He explains that he seemed on the window and greeted the quite a few followers who had attracted his presence however “when I thought about Salgari, my eyes were moistened. My success was based on the legendary Sandokan created by him, and I had no way to thank him. I retired inside the room to recompose myself, leaned my head in gratitude, and hugged Salgari in my heart. ” I’m not Kabir Bedi (and naturally I do not need his automobile Active, I lean earlier than Captain Salgari and I hug him jubilant in my hearty coronary heart, stuffed with adventures.