Kirpal (Kip) Singh

Kirpal (Kip) Singh

Kirpal Singh, or Kip, is a Sikh soldier, from India. He is working for the British Army, as a sapper. He diffuses the bombs planted through the countryside in Italy. He works around the Villa, but becomes close with Hana, Caravaggio and Almasy. He is twenty-six. Unlike the other characters, “He has emerged from the fighting with a calm which, even if false, means order for him. He continues his strictness,” (Ondaatje 1556-1557). He is fascinated by the British Empire and their customs, and he is loyal to the crown.
Almasy takes a liking for Kip, claiming “Kip and I are both international bastards— born in one place and choosing to live elsewhere. Fighting to get back to or get away from our homelands all our lives. Though Kip doesn’t recognize that yet. That’s why we get on so well together.” (Ondaatje 2139-2141).
Kirpal Singh is calm and reserved and loyal to the British Army, until he hears news about atomic bombs being dropped on Japan. He confronts Almasy
“I sat at the foot of this bed and listened to you, Uncle. These last months. When I was a kid I did that, the same thing. I believed I could fill myself up with what older people taught me. I believed I could carry that knowledge, slowly altering it, but in any case passing it beyond me to another. I grew up with traditions from my country, but later, more often, from your country. Your fragile white island that with customs and manners and books and prefects and reason somehow converted the rest of the world. [...] You and your Americans converted us. With your missionary rules. And Indian soldiers wasted their lives as heroes so they could be pukkah. You had wars like cricket. How did you fool us into this? Here … listen to what you people have done.” (Ondaatje 3415-3419).
Kip is destroyed by this act, and he reclaims his full name, Kirpal Singh, “His name is Kirpal Singh and he does not know what he is doing here” (Ondaatje 3476-3477). He escapes the villa, and retraces his steps through Italy, visiting various churches along the way.
In “Maps in Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, Abu Baker claims that “Ondaatje introduces the Indian Kip as a revolutionary version of Kipling’s Kim. Like Kim, Kip begins as a devoted colonised who serves the British Empire. Kim remains the devoted servant of the empire and works against his own people, whereas Kip rebels against it after the nuclear bombing of Japan and casts away his ‘colonised shell’. (Abu Baker, 107).
After the atomic bombs, Kip wonders what he has been doing all of these years during the war. He becomes distanced from the other characters, who although they are not British, are all part of a very different world than him. Kip blames the patient, yet Caravaggio claims “Of all people he is probably on your side” (Ondaatje, 3455). Of all the people at the Villa, Almasy best understands the harm nations and wars can do.
Kip removes himself from the others, and returns to his home. Near the end of the book, we see him in middle age. He is a doctor, with a wife and two children.