Akela (The Jungle Book) Akela (The Jungle Book) Akela ( / "Akelā" also called The Lone Wolf or Big Wolf) is a fictional character in Rudyard Kipling's stories, "The Jungle Book" and "The Second Jungle Book". He is the leader of the Seeonee pack of Indian wolves and presides over the pack's council meetings. It is at such a meeting that the pack adopts the lost child Mowgli and Akela becomes one of Mowgli's mentors. "Akelā" means "single or solitary" in Hindi and Urdu. Kipling also calls him the "Lone Wolf: Kipling portrays Akela with the character of an English gentleman. This is shown
Rudyard Kipling recognised as an incomparable, if controversial, interpreter of how empire was experienced. That, and an increasing recognition of his extraordinary narrative gifts, make him a force to be reckoned with." Rudyard Kipling was born on 30 December 1865 in Bombay, in the Bombay Presidency of British India, to Alice Kipling (née MacDonald) and John Lockwood Kipling. Alice (one of the four noted MacDonald sisters) was a vivacious woman, about whom Lord Dufferin would say, "Dullness and Mrs Kipling cannot exist in the same room." Lockwood Kipling, a sculptor and pottery designer, was the Principal and Professor of Architectural Sculpture at