India, April 19 -- Edward Lear, the 19th century English poet and painter, has been commissioned by the Viceroy of India, Lord Northbrook, to paint the majestic Kanchenjunga. Lear, the author of A Book of Nonsense (1846), arrives with his Albanian servant Giorgi Kokalis in Bombay in November 1873. After diagonally "traversing the belly of India" on trains, pony carts and jampans, he reaches Kurseong, which, arguably, offers the best view of the Kanchenjunga.

Far away from the world of drawing-room niceties, the 61-year-old overweight and asthmatic Lear quickly settles into the world of kitmutgars (servants) and kamsamahs (butlers), and is both fascinated and repelled by the colonial rulers. Simultaneously, he tries to deal with his recur...