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If you began to talk with a pussy cat, you must be either a grandmom or Mowgli.
Mowgli: Bagheera, Bagheera, Bagheera! Something happens with me, but what? I do not understand what`s wrong with me! Something is seething and boiling either in my stomach or in my soul, I can`t understand where! I want something but I don`t know what!
Bagheera: It`s springtime, Mowgli.
Mowgli: Springtime, really? I keep running to and fro as an idiot, my legs fail to obey me, yesterday I even ran slam-bang into a tree.
Bagheera: It`s a pine, Mowgli.
Mowgli: I thought as much. That spot is still swollen. It hurts. Just look at it!
Bagheera: It`s a black eye, Mowgli.
Mowgli: A black eye? Wow! Yesterday I met a nice girl, I called her: `Hi!` She answered: 2,000 rupees.
Bagheera: It`s a fine, Mowgli!
Mowgli: 2,000? A trine fine then! The price startled me so much that I simply escaped. I covered 1,609 metres!
Bagheera: It`s a mile, Mowgli.
Mowgli: After that I was tired and fast asleep. I saw a strange woman in my dream. She denuded me of all my money and didn`t let me drink!
Bagheera: It`s a wife, Mowgli.
Mowgli: When I woke up I saw four handsome banderlogs (i.e., monkeys in the Kipling`s book) singing and dancing to music.
Bagheera: It`s The Nice group*, Mowgli.
Rudyard Kipling: Sorry for interrupting your performance. The matter is that I`m Sir Rudyard Kipling, that very author of the Mowgli Saga. Just a few people remember me, even fewer people know that my name is Rudyard. A handful of people also know that it was me who wrote a ditty `The white moth to the closing bine`**. Thank you, thank you for your applause. And so, the reason by which I`ve appeared in here is just to say that while a great number of people of our planet has nothing to say the gang on this stage fabricated a whole sketch out of thin air. Let`s clap our hands and then come back to the point! Taking into account that population of our planet is 7 billions of persons just fancy how many more sketches are still to be made up out of whole cloth by these performers! Let`s wish them every success in their hard working!
Mowgli: Bagheera, what`s been that?
Bagheera: It`s been a hype***, Mowgli!
THE END
*at source The Na-na, the phenomenally popular Russian pop band of the 90-00s with a senseless title. The Nice (frontman Keith Emerson) is a British rock group of the 60-70s.
**at source `nuts`, `schizzo`.
**First published in a popular quarterly Century Magazine, Volume 0045 Issue 2, December 1892, pp. 278-279; first collected in the Inclusive Edition of Rudyard Kipling's Verse, 1919
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COMMENTARY
`The white moth to the closing bine` by Kipling became a Russian Gipsy love song `The hairy bumblebee to the closing bine` ("Мохнатый шмель на душистый хмель") https://youtu.be/tfA9fnF-2EQ composed for the feature film `Cruel Romance` ("Жестокий романс") from an Alexandre Ostrovsky play `Without a Dowry` ("Бесприданница") (1878). The first performer of the song in the film was a well-known Russian film director Nikita Mikhalkov. He acted in the film directed by no less famous film director Eldar Ryazanov. The poem by Kipling was translated by Grigoriy Kruzhkov and set to music by Andrei Petrov. The song immediately separated itself fom the movie to become an evergreen hit being up to now covered by a great many of singers in Russia. As to the first performer Nikita Mikhalkov, he was called by folks `the moustached bumblebee`.
By the way, the actress who played Bagheera in the humorous sketch, Yulia Mikhalkova, is his namesake rather than his kinswoman.
I can`t help adding that it`s been not an only case of using the poems by English-speaking authors as lyrics for the songs in the Russian movies. I mean classical poets like Robert Burns, for instance. His poem `Poortith Cauld And Restless Love`("Любовь и бедность") turned out to become a nice song in the Russian screen version of the Charley's Aunt https://youtu.be/quBNOg7dMNI.
Well, Rudyard Kipling and Robert Burns were the most demanded authors in the Russian cinema. The cinema-goers refused to believe that these authors were not the contemporary Russian poets. `For The Sake O' Somebody` by Robert Burns was a part of the original soundtrack (OST) of Eldar Ryazanov film `The Office Romance`. Wow! https://youtu.be/I7copnOqCfw
Back to Kipling. In 1967 the song https://youtu.be/W_nNnz4MGaE to his poem `If` was being performed in the USSR by a pop star Ghelena Velikanova.
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