Indian Ink

Indian Ink Summary | Act 1 Part 1 Summary

In 1930s India, Flora is on a train. She narrates the journey in the form of a letter, concluding by describing the way in which she was met in a town called Jummapur by the president of the local Theosophical Society, Mr. Coomaraswami. As he shakes her hand and welcomes her, the action moves continuously to the cottage in which Flora is to live, and where Mr. Coomaraswami welcomes her again then quickly leaves, saying she needs some rest. He promises to take her on a picnic the following day.

As Flora describes the cottage, still in the form of a letter, her elderly sister Mrs. Swan and her biographer, Pike, read the letter. Their world takes place in the 1980s, and exists alongside Flora's world in the past. Flora's description of the cottage includes a reference to a servant, Nazrul, and an incorrect reference to the type of cottage she's living in. Mrs. Swan comments on the mistake, and the action smoothly shifts into the modern area.

Mrs. Swan and Pike sit at an outdoor table and chairs, reading Flora's letters. Their conversation reveals that Pike is an American academic researching Flora's life, that Flora was a famous writer in the early part of the twentieth century, and that Pike is putting together a book of her Collected Letters. Pike talks about how the most exciting part of his work is creating the footnotes to the letters and explaining what things really mean.

As Pike and Mrs. Swan continue reading this particular letter, Flora narrates what happened at the picnic she was taken to by Coomaraswami. She refers to the way he carried a parasol over her the entire time, how she felt like a parade float symbolizing "The Subjugation of the Indian People," and comments that Coomaraswami was the least subjugated person she'd ever met. She also refers to "Herbert," and Mrs. Swan tells Pike that she means H.G. Wells, implying that he and Flora had an affair shortly before Flora left for India. When Pike becomes excited about learning more details like this about Flora's life, Mrs. Swan tells him sternly that he's not to write a biography, saying that it is a sure way of getting a person's life wrong.

The two continue reading Flora's letter. Flora narrates what happened when she did a lecture and answered questions from the audience. When she was done, she was asked a question about H.G. Wells that she was afraid was going to be personal but turned out to be about the kind of pen he wrote with. She talks about being afraid to be asked about Gertrude Stein, and Pike interjects one of his footnotes that comments on how Flora and Stein hated each other. Flora then narrates how she met "her painter," a man named Das. In a conversation with Flora that refers to Virginia Woolf and George Bernard Shaw, Das presents her with a pencil sketch he did during her lecture and asks permission to paint her in the same way as her writing painted a picture for him of life in London.

Pike asks whether the sketch still exists. Mrs. Swan tells him it wasn't in her suitcase, the only personal item of Flora's that she and her husband Eric inherited. She then talks about the way that she and Eric "shed" things in all their years of traveling. Pike takes that to mean she doesn't have the suitcase, and Mrs. Swan doesn't correct him, asking why, if Flora was so important, nobody paid any attention to her sixty years ago.