Character Analysis
When the Old Man Who Fought in '57 brings Kim and the lama to the Grand Trunk Road, they find his son waiting there. This middle-aged man is also in the army, but he is not the hero his father was: his main concern appears to be money and an expensive outfit when he goes to war.
The narrator implies that the old man's greedy, proud sons are bankrupting him, since the government gave him a lot of property after his service for the British Empire against the rebelling Indian troops, but "the demands of his sons, now gray-bearded officers on their own account, had impoverished him" (3.57).