Indian Ink

Praise for Indian Ink

“There’s plenty to cherish … Stoppard is in firm control of his themes and his language, which are inseparable. The dialogue is rife with witty instances of misunderstandings that remind us that there’s more than one way to speak and hear English.” —New York Times

“A play brimming with rasa … [Indian Ink] encompasses broad themes—from the morality of colonialism to our inability to truly understand the past—at the same time that it relates one of the most touching tales of human relationships Stoppard has ever written.” —Baltimore Sun

“There’s no denying the astonishing craft of the individual scenes, the masterly way Stoppard plays with echoes and reversals, tossing themes this way and that like pizza dough. The dialogue, too, is deeply entertaining—sexy or funny, and often both, as the case requires.” —New York

“A 1995 play by the exceedingly intelligent Tom Stoppard … Stoppard delights.” —Time Out New York

“[A] sensuous story of love and art.” —Huffington Post

“Tom Stoppard’s witty 1995 play Indian Ink takes a romantic look back at India under waning British rule.” —Associated Press

“In play after play, [Stoppard] has tackled subjects ranging from chaos theory and the philosophical underpinnings of the Russian Revolution to marriage and adultery with both a ferocious intellectual dexterity and a depth of human feeling that can make you laugh or move you to tears.” —USA Today

“Simply let yourself go to be swirled up in Tom Stoppard’s Indian Ink, a layered comedy about an English poet’s artistic-erotic visit to India in 1930 and the attempt of others to come to terms with its legacy 55 years later.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“The British playwright has always dazzled with his wit and mental agility, his gift for twirling characters and themes across the expanse of time and space. Indian Ink is no exception, an epic grappling with colonialism, race and history, but it’s also unexpectedly moving … Stimulates the heart as well as the intellect.” —Mercury News

“Tom Stoppard’s intelligent and sensitive play about art and love in the British Raj … It’s impossible to walk away without having learned something new. History and myth perform a graceful waltz through a storyline that unfolds like a good mystery novel.” —TheaterMania.com

Also by Tom Stoppard

PLAYS

The Hard Problem

Enter a Free Man

The Real Inspector Hound

After Magritte

Jumpers

Travesties

Dirty Linen and New-Found-Land

Every Good Boy Deserves Favour

Night and Day

Dogg’s Hamlet and Cahoot’s Macbeth

Undiscovered Country

(adapted from Arthur Schnitzler’s Das weite Land)

On the Razzle

(adapted from Johann Nestroy’s Einen Jux will er sich machen)

Arcadia

The Real Thing

Rough Crossing

(adapted from Ferenc Molnár’s Play at the Castle)

Dalliance

(adapted from Arthur Schnitzler’s Liebelei)

Hapgood

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead

(an adaptation of In the Native State)

The Invention of Love

Voyage: The Coast of Utopia Part I

Shipwreck: The Coast of Utopia Part II

Salvage: The Coast of Utopia Part III

Rock ‘n’ Roll

The Coast of Utopia: A Trilogy

TELEVISION SCRIPTS

A Separate Peace

Teeth

Another Moon Called Earth

Neutral Ground

Professional Foul

Squaring the Circle

Parade’s End

FICTION

Lord Malquist & Mr. Moon

TOM STOPPARD

INDIAN INK

Copyright © 1995 by Tom Stoppard

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove Atlantic, 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or [email protected].

CAUTION: Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that Indian Ink is subject to a royalty. It is fully protected under the copyright laws of the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and all British Commonwealth countries, and all countries covered by the International Copyright Union, the Pan-American Copyright Convention, and the Universal Copyright Convention. All rights, including professional, amateur, motion picture, recitation, public reading, radio broadcasting, television, video or sound taping, all other forms of mechanical or electronic reproduction, such as information storage and retrieval systems and photocopying, and rights of translation into foreign languages, are strictly reserved.

First-class professional, stock, and amateur applications for permission to perform it, and those other rights stated above, must be made in advance to Samuel French, Inc., 235 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10003, and for professional rights, to United Agents LLP, 12–26 Lexington Street, London, W1F 0LE.

First published in 1995 by Faber and Faber Limited

Printed in the United States of America

First Grove Atlantic paperback edition: December 2017

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available for this title.

ISBN 978-0-8021-2745-7

eISBN 978-0-8021-8888-5

Grove Press

an imprint of Grove Atlantic

154 West 14th Street

New York, NY 10011

Distributed by Publishers Group West

groveatlantic.com

17 18 19 20 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

In memoriam Laura Kendal

Table of Contents

Cover

Praise for Indian Ink

Also by Tom Stoppard

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Production Credits

Characters

Act One

Act Two

Back Cover

PRODUCTION CREDITS

Indian Ink had its first performance at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford, and opened at the Aldwych Theatre, London, on 27 February 1995.

The cast was as follows:

Indian Ink was produced in New York on 30 September 2014 at the Laura Pels Theatre at The Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre, directed by Carey Perloff.

The cast was as follows:

CHARACTERS

Flora Crewe

Coomaraswami

Nazrul

Eleanor Swan

Eldon Pike

Anish Das

Nirad Das

David Durance

Dilip

Resident

Englishwoman

Englishman

Rajah/Politician

Nell

Eric

In addition:

Indian Questioner(s)

Club Servant(s)

Rajah’s Servant(s)

The play is set in two periods, 1930 (in India) and mid-1980s (in England and India).

It is not intended that the stage be demarcated between India and England, or past and present. Floor space, and even furniture, may be common. In this respect and in others, the play profited greatly from Peter Wood’s direction. The stage directions generally follow the original production but are not offered as a blueprint for the staging.

T.S.

ACT ONE

Dusk. FLORA sits alone on a moving train. Her suitcase is on the rack above her head. The train is approaching a station. Flora, already speaking, stands to lift down her suitcase. By the end of her first speech, she is on the station platform at Jummapur.

FLORA ‘Jummapur, Wednesday, April the second. Darling Nell, I arrived here on Saturday from Bombay after a day and a night and a day in a Ladies Only, stopping now and again to be revictualled through the window with pots of tea and proper meals on matinee trays, which, remarkably, you hand back through the window at the next station down the line where they do the washing up; and from the last stop I had the compartment to myself, with the lights coming on for me to make my entrance on the platform at Jummapur. The President of the Theosophical Society was waiting with several members of the committee drawn up at a respectful distance, not quite a red carpet and brass band but garlands of marigolds at the ready, and I thought there must be somebody important on the train—’

COOMARASWAMI (Interrupting) Miss Crewe!

FLORA ‘—and it turned out to be me.’

COOMARASWAMI Welcome to Jummapur!

FLORA —’which was very agreeable.’ Thank you!

And as she is garlanded by COOMARASWAMI:

How nice! Are you Mr Coomar …

COOMARASWAMI Coomaraswami! That is me! Is this your only luggage?! Leave it there!

He claps his hands imperiously for assistance, and then shakes hands enthusiastically with Flora.

How do you do, Miss Crewe!

The handshake which begins on the station platform ends on the verandah of the ‘Dak Bungalow’, or guesthouse. The guesthouse requires a verandah and an interior which includes, or comprises, a bedroom. On the verandah is a small table with at least two chairs. There is an electric light, unlit, and an oil lamp, lit. The bedroom contains a bed under a mosquito net, a washstand, a bedside table, an electric fan and a ‘punkah’. There is a door to a bathroom off-stage.

A servant, NAZRUL, carries Flora’s suitcase into the bedroom, and then retreats to his quarters, out of sight.

FLORA (Completing the handshake) Thank you!

COOMARASWAMI Welcome, my dear Miss Crewe! And farewell! A day of rest!

FLORA Thank you—you were so kind to …

COOMARASWAMI I will leave you! Tomorrow, a picnic! Do you like temples?

FLORA Well, I don’t know … I’m sure I …

COOMARASWAMI Leave everything to me. !

Coomaraswami leaves her, shouting in Hindi for his buggydriver.

The Shepperton garden is now visible. Here, MRS SWAN and PIKE are having tea while occupied with a shoebox of Flora’s letters.

FLORA ‘And in no time at all I was installed in a little house, two good-sized rooms under a tin roof … with electric light … (She tries the electric light switch without result.) … and an oil lamp just in case …’ (She looks out from the verandah.) … a verandah looking out at a rather hopeless garden … but with a good table and chair which does very well for working …’ (She tries out the chair and the table.) ‘… and a wicker sofa of sorts for not working … and round the back …’ (She disappears around the corner of the verandah where it goes out of sight, while Mrs Swan turns a page of the letter.)

MRS SWAN I wish I’d kept the envelopes, they’d be worth something now, surely, the Indian ones at least.

PIKE Oh, but it’s the wine, not the bottles! These letters are a treasure. They may be the only family letters anywhere.

MRS SWAN I dare say, since I’m the only family.

PIKE Her handwriting sometimes … (He passes a letter to her for assistance.)

MRS SWAN (Deciphering where he indicates) ‘… a kitchen bit with a refrigerator …’

FLORA (Reappearing) ‘… a kitchen bit with a refrigerator! But Nazrul, my cook and bottle-washer, disdains the electric stove and makes his own arrangements on a little verandah of his own.’ (She goes into the interior, into the bedroom, where she tries the switch for the electric fan, again without result.) ‘My bedroom, apart from the electric fan, also has a punkah which is like a pelmet worked by a punkah-wallah who sits outside and flaps the thing by a system of ropes and pulleys, or would if he were here, which he isn’t. And then off the bedroom …’ (She disappears briefly through a door. Mrs Swan passes the page to Pike and they continue to read in silence.) (Reappearing) ‘… is a dressing room and bathroom combined, with a tin tub, and a shower with a head as big as a sunflower—a rainflower, of course …’ (Pike grunts approvingly) ‘… and all this is under a big green tree with monkeys and parrots in the branches, and it’s called a duck bungalow …’

MRS SWAN Dak bungalow.

FLORA ‘… although there is not a duck to be seen.’

She disappears into the bathroom with her suitcase.

MRS SWAN Dak was the post; they were post-houses, when letters went by runner.

PIKE Ah …

MRS SWAN I like to have two kinds of cake on the go. The Madeira is my own.

PIKE I’m really not hungry.

MRS SWAN I wouldn’t let that stop you, Mr Pike, if you hope to get on my good side.

PIKE I would love some. The Madeira. (She cuts him a slice.) And won’t you please call me Eldon? (He takes the slice of cake.) Thank you. (He takes the bite and gives a considered verdict.) Wonderful.

MRS SWAN I should think so.

PIKE It’s the excitement. There’s nothing like these in the British Library, you know!

MRS SWAN (Amused) The British Library!

PIKE The University of Texas has Flora Crewe indexed across twenty-two separate collections! And I still have the Bibliothèque Nationale next week. The Collected Letters are going to be a year of my life!

MRS SWAN A whole year just to collect them?

PIKE (Gaily) The notes, the notes! The notes is where the fun is! You can’t just collect Flora Crewe’s letters into a book and call it ‘The Collected Letters of Flora Crewe’. The correspondence of well-known writers is mostly written without a thought for the general reader. I mean, they don’t do their own footnotes. So there’s an opportunity here. Which you might call a sacred trust. Edited by E. Cooper Pike. There isn’t a page which doesn’t need—look—you see here?—’I had a funny dream last night about the Queen’s Elm.’ Which Queen? What elm? Why was she dreaming about a tree? So this is where I come in, wearing my editor’s hat. To lighten the darkness.

MRS SWAN It’s a pub in the Fulham Road.

PIKE Thank you. This is why God made poets and novelists, so the rest of us can get published. Would that be a chocolate cake?

MRS SWAN Why, would you … ?

PIKE No, I just thought: did your sister like chocolate cake particularly?

MRS SWAN What an odd thing to think. Flora didn’t like chocolate in any form.

PIKE Ah. That’s interesting. May I?

Pike takes the next page of the letter from the tea-table.

Flora approaches, accompanied by Coomaraswami, who has a yellow parasol.

FLORA ‘The sightseeing with picnic was something of a Progress with the president of the Theosophical Society holding a yellow parasol over me while the committee bicycled alongside, sometimes two to a bike, and children ran before and behind—I felt like a carnival float representing Empire—or, depending how you look at it, the Subjugation of the Indian People, and of course you’re right, darling, but I never saw anyone less subjugated than Mr Coomaraswami.’

COOMARASWAMI We have better temples in the south. I am from the south. You are right to be discriminating!

FLORA (Apologetically) Did I seem discriminating? I’m sure it wasn’t their fault. The insides of churches …

COOMARASWAMI I understand you completely, Miss Crewe!

FLORA But I don’t know what I’m trying to say!