Indian Ink Summary

Tom Stoppard’s play Indian Ink interweaves two storylines set more than

50 years apart. In 1930, the fiery, controversial English poet Flora
Crewe goes to the fictional city of Jummapur, India, where she
meets Nirad Das, a brilliant, passionate local painter. Das paints portraits
of Flora as she writes poetry about sex, love, and India; it’s never entirely
clear whether they become lovers. Meanwhile, two other men also court
Flora: a chauvinistic young English official, David Durance, and the
elegant and extravagantly wealthy Rajah (king) of Jummapur. In the other
timeline, in the 1980s, Flora’s elderly sister, Eleanor Swan, meets with two
men interested in Flora’s legacy: Eldon Pike, a literary critic who is
compiling Flora’s letters and writing her biography, and Nirad Das’s
son Anish, who wants to learn more about his father.

The play begins with Flora Crewe arriving in Jummapur to speak at the
local Theosophical Society, which accommodates her in a sparse but
functional old bungalow. While Flora acts out the letters she wrote to
Eleanor in 1930, Eleanor and Eldon Pike read the letters and discuss
Flora’s legacy in the 1980s. Coomaraswami, the Theosophical Society
president, gives Flora a tour of Jummapur and hosts her lecture at his
house. She is surprised to learn that her Indian audience knows almost
everything about the London literary scene. She strikes up a conversation
with the painter Nirad Das, who asks if he can paint her portrait. She
agrees, and he starts biking to her bungalow to paint her as she writes.
(Eldon Pike is astonished when he learns this: there are no known portraits
of Flora. But Eleanor Swan nonchalantly mentions that Modigliani once
painted Flora, too.) Flora and Das struggle to communicate at first because
of cultural barriers, but soon, they hit it off. Das even gifts Flora a copy of
Emily Eden’s colonial travelogue about India, Up the Country.
Later, Anish Das visits Eleanor and explains that his father, a little-known
artist who was imprisoned for supporting Indian independence in 1930,
painted the portrait on the cover of Eldon Pike’s Collected Letters of Flora
Crewe. Anish and Eleanor get into a heated political argument: he believes
that the British Empire exploited and impoverished India, while she views it
as the best thing to ever happen there—and thinks that Anish’s father
deserved jail time for opposing it. (In fact, Eleanor’s husband was a British
army officer who was long stationed in India.) Anish explains that he’s a
painter, just like his father, and Eleanor agrees to let him sketch her.

Fifty years before, Flora and Das also discuss the budding Indian
nationalist movement—Das supports it but is afraid to say too much and
incriminate himself to an Englishwoman. The same day, Captain David
Durance visits Flora’s house unannounced and asks her to dinner at the
official British Residency. She finds him pompous and distasteful, but she
agrees. Meanwhile, during their painting sessions, Das and Flora chat
about politics, the Hindu story of Radha and Krishna’s love affair, and the
concept of rasa (or the emotional “essence” of a work of art).

In the 1980s, Eleanor Swan tells Anish Das that Eldon Pike’s footnotes to
Flora’s poems and letters are highly unreliable. Meanwhile, Pike and his
friend Dilip show up in Jummapur in search of information about Flora—
especially a lost watercolour portrait of her in the nude by Das.

Back in 1930, Das tears up his pencil sketch of Flora because he’s insulted
that she didn’t say anything when he showed it to her. When he tries to
destroy his canvas portrait, too, he and Flora start fighting over it—but she
quickly collapses in exhaustion. She admits that she has come to India
because she is dying (likely of tuberculosis). She wants to shower, but the
running water is broken, so Das helps her bathe with a jug of water. She
asks if he wants to paint her in the nude, and she requests that he paint her
in his own authentic, Indian artistic style rather than continuing to imitate
the Western styles that the British have imposed on him. He agrees.

Act Two of Indian Ink begins with Flora and David Durance dancing after
dinner at the Jummapur Club in 1930, while Dilip and Pike go to the same
club—which is largely unchanged—five decades later. They finally find a
connection to Flora: Subadar Ram Sunil Singh, an elderly man who was
Flora’s punkah (fan) operator as a young boy and remembers her
meetings with Das. In 1930, David Durance takes Flora out for a drive and
horseback ride, but he strikes all the wrong notes. He awkwardly brings up
the obscenity lawsuit that her publisher faced for printing her erotic poetry
and stupidly insists that only the English can rule India effectively. He asks
her to marry him, and she says absolutely not.

In the 1980s, after visiting the Jummapur Club, Dilip and Pike go to the
Rajah’s palace—which is now a luxury hotel. They discuss Indian politics
and debate whether Das and Flora were lovers. In 1930, the Rajah visits
Flora and impresses her by having just a few of his 86 luxury cars drive by
her bungalow. He warns that India must not become independent and
agrees to show her his art collection, on the condition that he can gift her a
painting. Back in the 1980s, Dilip and Pike meet the new Rajah of
Jummapur—who is the original Rajah’s grandson. He no longer has any
formal powers, but he is a member of India’s parliament. Meanwhile, back
in England, Anish Das and Eleanor Swan admire Nirad Das’s two paintings
of Flora—the oil portrait and the nude watercolour, both unfinished—as well
as the Rajah’s painting of Krishna and Radha.

In 1930, after Flora’s date with the Rajah, Das and Coomaraswami visit her
and explain that the Rajah is shutting down the Theosophical Society over
its support for the independence movement. Fed up, Flora decides to leave
Jummapur for better weather. She and Das share a tearful goodbye: he
gives her his watercolour and she reads him an erotic poem. Later, David
Durance visits Flora and grows furious when she tells him that the Rajah
visited her—he doesn’t think she should be involved with Indian men, least
of all “politically sensitive” ones.

In one of her final letters to Eleanor, Flora reports that she has finished her
poetry book, Indian Ink, and admits that Eleanor “won’t approve” of the man
she is involved with. Years later, Anish Das assumes that this man was his
father, but Eleanor thinks it may have been David Durance or the Rajah.
She also reveals why Nirad Das ended up in prison: he threw mangos at a
British official’s car—which David Durance was probably driving on one of
his dates with Flora.

Flora dies just a few weeks after her departure from Jummapur, and when
Eleanor visits her grave a year later, she meets her husband Eric, an
official who works for the British government. The play closes with Flora
reading from her letters and Up the Country, in which Emily Eden wonders
why Indians don’t just band together and murder their British overlords.