Indian Ink

by

Tom Stoppard

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Indian Ink: Act 1 Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
Flora Crewe disembarks a train in the fictional town of Jummapur, India in 1930. Coomaraswami, who works for the Theosophical Society, greets her at the train platform. He garlands her with marigolds, kindly leads her to a bungalow (guesthouse), and leaves her to rest. Nazrul, a servant, carries her luggage.
Stoppard introduces his play’s protagonist (Flora Crewe) and its central premise (her trip to India in 1930). But her warm welcome doesn’t just reflect Eastern hospitality—it also demonstrates how British colonialism imposed a strict, oppressive, and exploitative hierarchy on India. Native Indians effectively became servants and slaves to British invaders—including even freethinkers who didn’t agree with the colonial system (like Flora).
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In England in the 1980s, Eleanor Swan and Eldon Pike sit in a garden with a shoebox of Flora Crewe’s letters to Eleanor. While they converse on one part of the stage, on another, Flora variously reads from her letters and acts out scenes from her time in India.
Throughout Indian Ink, this second timeline will play out onstage alongside the first. Stoppard uses this technique to show how the past and the present are intertwined: not only does the past set the foundation for the present, but people can only access the past through the ways that they study and remember it in the present. In particular, Stoppard will use other characters’ memories of Flora to explore colonialism’s long-term effects on both Britain and India.
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Flora Crewe discovers that the electric light in her bungalow is broken, but that its oil lamp works. She tests the chair, table, and sofa on the verandah. Meanwhile, Eldon Pike calls Flora’s letters a treasure. Eleanor Swan, Flora’s sister, is her only remaining family. Flora writes that the servant Nazrul avoids using the electric kitchen appliances, and that she needs to hire a boy to operate her punkah. She calls the house a “duck bungalow,” but Swan clarifies to Pike that it’s really a “dak bungalow”—an old post house. Swan offers Pike cake, which he reluctantly accepts.
Flora immediately notices the technological and infrastructural differences between London and India. Londoners light and cool their houses with electricity, whereas English people living in India employ slaves and servants to do the same. Flora’s confusion about the dak bungalow underlines how ignorant she is about the country where she has arrived—and where everyone bends over backwards to satisfy her. Swan’s clarification hints at an important plot point: Swan lived much longer in India than Flora ever did—and her perspective on it is very different.
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Pike explains that he is compiling The Collected Letters of Flora Crewe—but that most of the work will be adding notes. He starts reading the next letter: Flora describes how the Theosophical Society took her on a formal sightseeing tour, which made her feel “like a carnival float representing Empire.” Coomaraswami tells Flora that the temples are better in southern India (where he’s from), but Flora apologizes—she’s not religious, so she doesn’t really appreciate temples. She tells Coomaraswami how “Herbert’s lady decorator” once joked, “I worship mauve.” Swan explains to Pike that “Herbert” is the famous writer H.G. Wells, whom Flora met just before leading to India.
The two timelines intermingle, raising the question of how much Pike and Swan distort the past as they remember it. Pike’s book makes it clear why Flora’s memory is so significant: she was a major figure in the interwar London literary scene, as well as an early feminist icon. Meanwhile, Flora immediately recognizes how colonialism deeply shapes the way everyone views and treats her in India. Even though she’s utterly ignorant about Indian culture and people, she makes a point of trying to respect them. In fact, as soon as she arrives in India, she becomes the beneficiary of a deeply exploitative colonial system—but unlike most English people in India, she recognizes and questions it.
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Flora writes about giving a lecture at Coomaraswami’s house. Afterward, an audience member asks if her “intimate friend” H.G. Wells writes with a pen or a typewriter—and she says pen, even though she has no idea. (Pike starts inserting his annotations: Flora only met Wells briefly, for a weekend.) Later, at her reception, Flora is surprised at how closely Indians follow London intellectual life. The same audience member asks her about Gertrude Stein, whom she dislikes but refrains from insulting.
Flora realizes that, even though she is totally ignorant about India, educated Indians are deeply knowledgeable about England. They find her visit exciting because she can put them in touch with an English literary world that scarcely thinks or cares about them. Put differently, Flora realizes that the British have colonized India’s culture as well as its people: colonialism teaches Indians to value English culture above their own and prevents them from forming a vibrant local intellectual culture.
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Later, Flora meets the painter Nirad Das, who asks her about Virginia Woolf, George Bernard Shaw, and London. He says that he loves Chelsea, where Flora lives, because so many famous painters lived there. He offers to paint a portrait of Flora, and he gives her a rough pencil sketch that he did of her. Back in the 1980s, Pike asks Swan if she has the sketch. Swan says no—in fact, Flora only left behind one suitcase. But Pike is furious to hear that Swan threw it away.
Stoppard introduces the play’s other central figure: Nirad Das, an Indian painter who—like most educated Indians—is thoroughly steeped in British culture. Stoppard will use Das and Flora’s interactions to explore the relationship between several of the complementary pairs that his work tries to bridge: England and India, women and men, and literature and visual art.
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Pike reads another letter. Nirad Das bikes to Flora’s guesthouse with his easel, canvas, and paints. Flora comes outside in a vivid blue dress, greets him, and starts to write while he paints her. Reading Flora’s letter, Pike realizes that Das painted Flora nude in watercolor on paper—but Swan corrects him: it’s oil on canvas. The portrait is “fairly ghastly,” Swan says, but it’s above her wardrobe somewhere. Pike is astonished: there are no known portraits of Flora. But Swan nonchalantly mentions that Modigliani also painted Flora nude in 1918. (But someone burned it.)
Das and Flora’s collaboration represents something highly unusual in colonial India: Indians and English people meeting as equals. Pike and Swan’s different perspectives on the painting reflect the opposition between two different ways of remembering the past: the formal, dry memory of academic research and the informal, emotional memory of those with personal connections to significant historical figures. For Swan, the portrait of Flora is “ghastly” because it’s not the way she wants to remember her sister; for Pike, it’s an incredible artifact because it offers unique insight into a significant historical figure.
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Flora sits on her verandah in the blue dress, writing a poem about heat (which represents sexual desire), while Das paints her. She accidentally moves and crosses her legs, so he stops painting. She apologizes, but he thanks her for her patience and kindness, then asks, “May I ask you a personal question?” She responds, “That is a personal question.” He anxiously explains that he was just wondering about her poem, but promises not to ask his question. She replies, “My poem is about heat.” He goes back to painting her skirt, and she continues writing. Meanwhile, on the other part of the stage, Das’s son Anish walks into Mrs. Swan’s garden.
The sexual tension between Das and Flora is evident and building. After all, their collaboration represents a kind of symbolic, artistic unity: he paints her writing, and she writes about a desire that is presumably directed at him. Of course, Flora’s choice of material also explains why she was so controversial during her time, and why she was so historically significant decades later: it was scandalous for a woman to write openly about sex in the 1920s and 1930s. Finally, even though Flora and Das meet as relative equals as they make their art, Das still acts with caution and deference towards Flora—which shows how the colonial system’s hierarchies affect them nonetheless.
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Flora and Das continue bantering. Flora tells Das that she wants “to ask [him] a delicate question,” and he responds by exclaiming, “I am transported beyond my most fantastical hopes of our fellowship!” She tells him not “to be so Indian”—or maybe “more Indian.” She means that instead of acting overenthusiastic and “Englished-up” in every conversation, he should just talk to her as if she were a normal Indian person. He says that’s impossible, but she says it’s possible to imagine, like a unicorn. He replies, “you can imagine [a unicorn] but you cannot mount it,” but she responds that she was only planning to imagine it. Understanding the innuendo, Das grows uncomfortable and apologizes, but Flora ridicules him. He says that she’s cruel, and she apologizes. He decides to continue painting in silence.
Flora can tell that Das’s response is insincere: even if his enthusiasm is genuine, he is trying too hard to play a part. Her confusion about whether truly being Indian means playing this part or relinquishing it shows that colonialism shapes English people’s concepts of Indianness just as deeply as it shapes Indian people’s concepts of Englishness. Still, with his unicorn metaphor, Das clearly explains why he’s playing a part: it's unthinkable and dangerous for Indians and English people to treat each other as equals. In the colonial system, the English (including Flora) have practically absolute power over Indians (including Das).
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In the 1980s, Mrs. Eleanor Swan brings Anish Das tea and cake, and they sit in the garden. Swan asks if Anish is like his father. Anish says that, unlike his father, he hasn’t “suffered for his beliefs”—but he is also a painter. Swan declares that they are both Indian painters, so they are alike. Anish pulls out a copy of Eldon Pike’s The Collected Letters of Flora Crewe, then declares that his father painted the portrait on the cover and would be proud to see his work reproduced. But Swan is skeptical. She asks how Anish’s father “suffered for his beliefs,” and Anish explains that he was imprisoned for protesting the British Empire. Swan says that he “obviously deserved what he got.” She offers Anish cake, which he accepts, and Anish points out that his father was imprisoned in 1930—the year he met Flora.
Anish Das’s visit advances the play’s plot in several ways. It also reveals important details about Nirad Das’s story. It demonstrates how Eldon Pike’s academic remembrance can combine with and enrich Swan’s personal remembrance. And it shows how colonial-era hierarchies and tensions persist for decades after India won its independence. Whereas Flora knew little about India but saw British colonial rule as obviously unjust, her sister Eleanor still avidly defends the Empire more than 50 years later. When Eleanor declares that Anish and his father must be similar, she makes it clear that she isn’t capable of seeing any complexity or individuality in them beyond their being Indian—in her mind, Indians are still a class of inferior colonial subjects who are only significant if and when British people say they are.
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On another day in 1930, Flora asks Das if they are friends again—he says yes. She jokes that he should write something on his pencil sketch of her. Nazrul brings Flora lemonade, and as a gift, Das gives her an old copy of Up the Country, Emily Eden’s book of letters about traveling through India.
Das and Flora’s reconciliation again shows how basic human instincts, which bring different kinds of people together, serve as important counterweights to colonialism, which tears people apart. Still, Nazrul’s presence and Up the Country—a book about India by the sister of a high-ranking English official—shows that Flora and Das can’t escape this system completely.
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Back in the 1980s, Anish Das tells Mrs. Swan about his father. Nirad Das was 34 in 1930—younger than Flora—and a widower. He loved to read English novels to Anish; he got “a proper English education” at Bombay’s prestigious Elphinstone College. Swan finds this surprising, given his political leanings. Anish explains that Jummapur’s people supported the English until the First War of Indian Independence—which Swan calls “the Mutiny.” Anish disapprovingly says that he hasn’t “come to give [Swan] a history lesson,” but Swan says he’s obviously wrong: the British brought culture to India, she argues, like the Romans did to Britain.
Nirad Das’s background reflects the complexity of English cultural influence in India: appreciating English art and literature didn’t necessarily mean supporting British rule. Rather, like any colonized people, Indians adopted some elements of their colonizers’ culture while rejecting others. Meanwhile, Anish and Swan’s disagreement about the nature of the War reflects how India and the U.K. still remember the colonial era in completely different ways—while Indians deeply understand colonialism’s deep impacts on their nation, Britain has never fully come to terms with it.
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Swan asks why Anish speaks English so well and tells him to eat more cake. Anish calls her “very wicked” and insists that “We [Indians] were the Romans!” because India was far more advanced than England for thousands of years. She asks if Anish is returning to India, but he explains that he lives in England and is married to an English woman he met in art school. Swan finds this charming, until Anish explains that his wife was a model—not a painter. He explains that he paints “deconstructive” paintings now, and she calls it “a shame.” He asks if he can sketch her, “to close one of [life’s] many circles.” She calls this reasoning “very east of Suez,” but agrees.
The vast majority of historians would side with Anish, who argues that British colonialism played a significant role in setting India up for its present-day underdevelopment. Anish’s life shows how colonialism has transformed Britain, too, by enabling migration and diversifying the population. Swan may still think of the U.K. as an essentially white country and Anish as a foreigner there, but clearly, times have changed. Of course, just as the legacy of colonialism continues to shape both India and the U.K., Anish’s marriage to an English model suggests that he has fulfilled his father’s legacy, too. When Swan calls his desire to paint her Eastern, she draws a tenuous distinction between traditional European concepts of history—according to which the past ends and people must simply move on from it—and Indian concepts of history, in which the past lives on into the present. Of course, Stoppard complicates this oversimplified distinction throughout the play.
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In the 1930s, Flora Crewe and Nirad Das have a contest to see who can use more Indian words—like dungarees, pyjamas, chutney, hullabaloo, and coolie. Flora wins but admits that she memorized a word list. Das explains that he learned English by reading classic novels. He jokes that Lord Macaulay—the politician who forced the British education system on India—did a great service, because the independence movement could only form once educated Indians could all communicate with each other in English. Flora asks Das if he’s a nationalist, but he changes the subject back to the painting. He agrees to let Flora look at it. She explains that a friend once painted her in the nude, but her ex-fiancé burned it.
Flora and Das’s game shows both that she is starting to learn about India and that Indian languages have made a lasting impact on English. Of course, Das’s comments about Macaulay point to English’s even greater influence on India. In addition to locating the play within the historical context of the Indian independence movement, these comments again demonstrate that the British influence on India is too complex to be reduced to a simple positive or negative. Whereas colonizers like Macaulay foolishly thought that teaching Indians English would civilize and improve them, in reality, it gave them the crucial tool that they needed to overthrow British rule.
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Suddenly, Captain David Durance arrives on a horse. He greets Flora and Das—who leaves on his bicycle. Durance asks if Flora needs anything and explains that he heard about her arrival through word of mouth. He asks what she is doing in India and if she has any friends there—like Mr. Das. She says no and asks if he’s a policeman, but he isn’t. She explains that Mr. Joshua Chamberlain has organized for her to travel around India, speaking about the London literary scene in exchange for room and board. Durance says that she should have stayed at the official British Residency and asks if she knows that Chamberlain is a communist. She sarcastically says that she does.
Durance’s arrival transforms the play’s atmosphere, shutting down Das and Flora’s free, playful conversation. Durance reimposes the British Empire’s strict social hierarchy and pervasive sense of suspicion; he views Flora’s presence in India as threatening because she clearly doesn’t agree with the colonial government’s official stances. In particular, Flora’s friendship with Das shows that Indian and English people are inherently equal—a truth that threatens the fundamental premise behind colonial rule.
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Durance tells Flora to visit the British Club. They shake hands, and Flora asks about Durance’s job. He explains that he works for the Viceroy to ensure that the local Indian rulers “don’t get up to mischief.” She points out that he really is a policeman, and he laughs. He asks her out to dinner—he’s not married—and they agree that he will pick her up at eight on Saturday evening. He rides off.
Durance speaks about his job in euphemistic terms, but what he really means is that he enforces the Empire’s control over the local leaders who still technically rule much of India (like the Rajah in Jummapur). Durance’s date invitation makes it clear that, regardless of Flora’s political persuasions, they belong to the same social class in India.
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In the 1980s, Anish Das is drawing Eleanor Swan. Swan insists that the British weren’t responsible for imprisoning Anish’s father, since Jummapur was ruled by a local Rajah. She says that he would have gone to prison for longer if he were living under direct British rule—for at least a year, instead of six months. She declares that Indians wanted to go to jail so that they could look like serious activists and brags that her husband Eric, a British official, used to let them off with just a fine to spite them.
David Durance’s comments about his job in the last scene make it clear that Swan’s characterization of Das’s imprisonment is deeply misleading. The Rajah technically did rule Jummapur, but only because he agreed to work as a British agent—and help the British deflect responsibility for their abuses of power (like arbitrarily detaining independence activists). Lastly, Swan’s marriage to Eric helps explain her regressive views on India: she and her family were colonizers who profited handsomely from British rule there.
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Swan asks if Anish’s paintings are like the cake she’s feeding him—but he says that they’re difficult to describe. He shows her his drawing of her, and she’s impressed. Swan asks Anish what they should tell Eldon Pike—who she thinks is secretly writing Flora’s biography. She complains that Pike added far too many footnotes, and that Flora has turned into a dull academic subject. Nobody paid attention to her during her life. Anish asks if he can see his father’s original portrait of Flora, and Swan agrees.
Swan’s approach to biography, which focuses on Flora as a person, still sharply contrasts with Pike’s, which focuses on her as a historical figure. Stoppard asks how these two strategies relate to one another—and which should define the way that a culture remembers its heroes. Swan’s memories have a specific emotional resonance, but they are fundamentally private; in contrast, Pike’s academic biography offers broadly applicable, if dry, lessons to a much wider audience. Perhaps Anish Das offers a solution: he uses Eldon Pike’s dry research as a tool in his quest to understand himself, his family, and his country in a deeper, personal way.
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Das paints Flora while she sits on her verandah in her blue dress, writing a poem about Das fantasizing about her. Das helps her order bread, butter, and duck pâté in Hindi from Nazrul. But Nazrul reports that the pâté has been stolen—Flora points out that it contains pork, so touching it is against Nazrul’s religion. Das says that only God knows, and Flora jokes, “Which God do you mean? […] Yours was here first.” Das tells her about the god Krishna’s affair with Radha, a beautiful herdswoman, in Hindu mythology. Flora describes the statues of buxom women in the Hindu temples she visited with Coomaraswami.
Flora and Das’s jokes about Nazrul’s real motives again underline the deep gulf between British colonizers (and the educated Indians who work with them), on the one hand, and the vast majority of Indians, on the other. Perhaps more troublingly, this raises the question of whether Das painting Flora is any different—or whether this action, too, is a kind of servitude. Yet the story of Krishna and Radha adds complexity to this question. Not only does the story suggest that Das and Flora are falling in love, but it also suggests that love can help people cross social boundaries—after all, Krishna was a God and Radha, an ordinary mortal.
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Flora admits that she’s struggling to write because “the … emotion won’t harmonize.” Das reports that he can’t paint because he doesn’t have the right rasa—which he defines as “juice,” “essence,” or “the emotion which the artist must arouse in you.” There are nine rasa, which correspond to nine colors and nine moods. When Flora says that her poem is about sex, Das explains that her rasa is Shringara, erotic love, which is blue-black. Flora compares Das to Dr. Aziz from E.M. Forster’s novel A Passage to India, “for not knowing his worth.” But Das promises that Aziz improves at the end of the novel.
Just as English art has inspired Das’s creative work throughout his life, his lessons about Indian art theory now inspire Flora’s poetry. Of course, the erotic subject matter of Flora’s poetry again hints at the nature of her relationship with Das. But her reference to A Passage to India complicates this suggestion by hinting that it is not safe for Das to get involved with her. Forster’s novel explores the complexities of sex, power, and culture in colonial India by telling the story of an Englishwoman falsely accusing a respected Indian doctor (Dr. Aziz) of sexual assault.
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Decades later, the well-dressed Eldon Pike arrives in modern Jummapur and finds it “vaguely disappoint[ing].” In one of her letters, Flora wrote that Das thought she was “posing as a poet,” like “the Enemy.” Pike clarifies with a footnote: “the Enemy” was the London poet J.C. Squire, who complained that young women shouldn’t be poets. Dilip offers Pike an Indian cola, but Pike refuses. Dilip explains that Flora’s bungalow was exactly where they’re standing—but it was destroyed in 1947 during the riots that followed the Partition of India and Pakistan. Dilip and Pike take photos of each other, and Pike considers putting out an ad in the newspaper to request information about Das and his portrait of Flora.
Pike’s research gave him high hopes for Jummapur, which he idealized because of the important role it played Flora’s life. When his actual visit disappoints, this suggests that he has been wrongly giving theory the upper hand over reality. And yet Flora’s conflict with Squire demonstrates why she was so historically significant as a feminist figure—and why Pike’s academic research into her life is actually noble and valuable. The destruction of her bungalow also shows how research can uncover important historical truths that can become buried—literally or figuratively—under the weight of time.
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While Dilip goes to the roof to find a better angle for the photos, Flora reads from her letters about Das, but Pike interrupts with irrelevant footnotes about Gandhi’s Salt March, the influential Tree family, and Flora’s family doctor. Flora yells at Pike: “Oh, shut up!” At the same time, Das yells, “Get off!” at a stray dog, and Dilip yells “Eldon!” Pike walks offstage.
In a rare moment of comic relief, several characters agree that Eldon Pike’s rigid, academic approach to documenting Flora’s life and work misses everything that’s really valuable about her story: her freedom, her passion, and above all, her bold willingness to engage with India on its own terms, rather than through the same chauvinistic perspective as other British people.
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Back in 1930, Das apologizes to Flora—he’s struggling to paint. But Flora says it’s really her fault: the mood changed because she stopped writing her poem and started writing a letter to her sister. Das smokes a cigarette and asks about Flora’s sister, Eleanor. He’s thrilled to learn that Eleanor lives in Doughty Street in Holborn—the same street as Dickens—and works for Joshua Chamberlain’s newspaper, The Flag. Das recalls how the Rajah suspended the Jummapur Theosophical Society after Chamberlain gave a lecture opposing the British Empire. Flora reveals that Eleanor is also Chamberlain’s mistress. Das assumes that Eleanor won’t be able to marry and her family will be ashamed of her. But Flora is actually “very happy for [Eleanor].”
Flora recognizes that, even though Das can’t see what she’s writing, it affects the atmosphere of his painting because it shapes the mood of the whole scene. In a sense, their art is so interconnected that it becomes, essentially, collaborative. This raises the important question of why, in his research into Flora’s poetry, Eldon Pike never takes Das seriously as an influence on her. Yet Flora and Das’s connection once again shows how art can unite people, which—in the colonial context—enabled them to fight back against colonialism’s divide-and-conquer tactics. This was no doubt Joseph Chamberlain’s goal in sending Flora to Jummapur—and David Durance’s great fear. Finally, Flora also reveals interesting details about Eleanor’s early life—which makes it clear that Eleanor’s marriage to Eric fundamentally changed her political outlook and beliefs.
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Flora wants to continue writing, but Das says that he’s done painting for the day, and he starts to hurry away. Flora asks what she did wrong, and Das finally admits that it’s that she looked at the painting but didn’t say anything. He grabs his pencil sketch of Flora and tears it up into little pieces. He tries to grab his canvas, but Flora won’t let him, and they end up fighting over it. Flora suddenly runs out of breath and collapses; Das helps her seat herself. She says that she has come to India for her health—she has lung issues. She and Das agree that she should go up to the mountains soon.
Flora and Das’s feelings for each other give way to conflict because of their incompatible (but unspoken) expectations about their art. Clearly, Flora does appreciate Das’s portraits of her—but he expected her to communicate her appreciation in a different way. Meanwhile, Flora’s comments about her health show that there is far more to her story than meets the eye. They also put an implicit end date on her stay in Jummapur.
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Flora goes inside the bungalow to take a shower. She undresses and goes to the bathroom while Das gets her a towel from Nazrul and waits with it in her bedroom. But the running water is broken, so Flora returns to her bedroom, naked, to lie down. When he sees her, Das is frightened and tries to leave, but she asks him to pour a jug of water over her head in the bathroom. He does. Das adjusts her mosquito net and she gets back in bed, removes her towel, and gets under the covers. She finally asks Das the “delicate question” she has been thinking about: does he want to paint her nude? It would have “more what-do-you-call it”—rasa, Das replies. Das leaves the room.
Flora’s poetry and reputation have already shown the audience that she is sexually liberated; now, the tension between her and Das escalates, but Stoppard stops short of making it clear that their relationship turns sexual. Some audience members may see Stoppard as reinforcing racist stereotypes about Indian men being sexually conservative, while others may view him as celebrating the way that love and sexual attraction can connect people across social and cultural boundaries. After all, relationships between Indian men and English women were viewed as entirely taboo in colonial India (even though the opposite was common and accepted).
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In the 1980s, Eleanor Swan brings Nirad Das’s portrait of Flora out to her garden and shows it to Anish Das. Swan calls it “a bit much,” but Anish finds it “vibrant” and starts to weep. Anish explains that the portrait is unfinished, because his father never painted the background. Das must have abandoned it and started another one. He pulls a small watercolor out of his briefcase. Swan moans, “Oh heavens!” But getting painted in the nude was so “like Flora,” she admits.
Nirad Das’s two portraits of Flora represent two stages in their relationship, two opposite ways of remembering their legacy, and two different artistic styles—one mostly English, one distinctively Indian. Of course, Swan’s conservatism and Anish’s artistic vocation shape their reactions to the paintings: Swan sees them as crude and frivolous, while Anish sees them as a deep reflection of both his father and Flora’s creative brilliance. Still, these paintings enable both of them to remember beloved relatives who left very little behind.
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Back in 1930, Nazrul brings soda water back from the market, and Das pours it in a glass for Flora. Das reports that Nazrul claims to have run into a riot on his way home and lost two chickens. He and Flora wonder whether it really happened. Das sends Nazrul to bring the dhobi (washerwoman) and warns Flora not to drink the water Nazrul gives her. Meanwhile, the punkah starts circulating cool air around the bungalow—Das explains that he found a boy to operate it. Das tries to leave Flora’s bedroom so that Nazrul won’t see him there. In fact, he’s never been all alone with an Englishwoman before, and he feels ashamed to have seen Flora naked. But Flora says that a real artist would take it in stride.
Das’s comments to Flora about Nazrul are in part practical—it’s true that Nazrul may be lying about the chickens, and it’s true that Indian water may make Flora sick. At the same time, his comments reflect the divisions and distrust between Indian elites and commoners. Of course, this also echoes the scene in which Dilip refused to drink Indian cola on his trip to Jummapur—which is another of the countless details that Stoppard includes to show how the past shapes the present. Meanwhile, the riot in the streets shows that the Indian independence movement is still active in the background of the play. Das worries about Nazrul seeing him in Flora’s room because he knows that he could face dire consequences from the colonial government for getting involved with her.
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Quotes
Flora explains how she poured a drink on J.C. Squire’s head after he criticized her poetry, but she regrets spending weeks of her life on him. Das asks if she’s dying, and she says yes—but slowly, she hopes. She admits that she didn’t tell Das what she thinks about his painting because she expected him to “be an Indian artist”—but instead, he’s obsessed with England. She wants Das to paint her from an Indian point of view, not an English one.
Flora’s shocking revelation about her health should lead the audience to rethink the meaning of her journey, her relationship with Das, and others’ efforts to remember her life and work decades later. She will not make it out of India alive, and the poetry that she is writing with and about Das will be her final work. The context of her trip also makes it clear why Das’s painting is so shocking to her: she has come to India in search of Indian art but has found artists imitating English art instead. This doesn’t mean that nothing remotely English can be authentically Indian, but it does mean that the British Empire has mistreated India to the point of suppressing its native art.
Themes
The Effects of Colonialism Theme Icon
History and Memory Theme Icon
Art and Inspiration Theme Icon
Quotes
Das smokes a cigarette on the verandah and declares that “the bloody Empire finished off Indian painting!” He admits that he agrees with Joshua Chamberlain: the English robbed and exploited India. Eventually, the British Empire will fade away, leaving behind just its monuments and art, like the Mughals. Flora repeats that Das must use her for his art, representing her according to his perspective and conventions. Das notes that the story of Krishna and Radha is central to the tradition of Rajasthani painting.
The play sets up a metaphorical link between Das’s painting and the independence movement: both represent India fighting to win itself back from Britain. Flora asks Das to discover his own authentic perspective by painting for himself and his fellow Indians, and not for the British audiences that have so long held the power to determine which Indian art gets taken seriously. Of course, this doesn’t mean that Das has to purify his work of everything British—just that he shouldn’t focus on imitating British art.
Themes
The Effects of Colonialism Theme Icon
Art and Inspiration Theme Icon
Quotes
The electricity returns, and the ceiling fan turns on. Flora tells Das that Durance invited her to dinner, and then she asks if Krishna and Radha were punished for their affair. She also tells him to give the punkah boy (Subadar Ram Sunil Singh) a rupee; he gives the boy an anna instead (1/16 rupee).
Flora’s comment about Krishna and Radha once again hints that her relationship with Das is more than just artistic. It’s curious that Act One ends with Flora paying the punkah boy—which again reminds the audience about the invisible Indian labor that makes her trip to India possible (as well as British colonialism and Britain’s present-day wealth). An anna is insignificant to Flora, but—as the audience will soon learn—a significant sum to the boy. This doesn’t just speak to the enduring inequality between Britain and India: it also indicates that British colonialism is responsible for this inequality.
Themes
The Effects of Colonialism Theme Icon
Sex and Love Theme Icon