A radio play by Sir Tom Stoppard, set in India in 1930 and in England in the present day.

Flora Crewe is a young poet touring India for her health; she is visiting the native state of Jummapur. A local painter, Mr Nirad Das, asks to paint her. They discuss her poetry and his painting, and he explains how rasa (something like 'mood' or 'flavour') is important to both.

She is a known free-thinker (and one-time lover of H.G. Wells), and he is associated with liberal thinkers in his country. The British do not rule it, but the Maharajah is conservative, and this brings an awkward political dimension to her presence.

Interwoven with this story is that of her sister, now elderly, meeting the painter's son, who had seen his father's work on the cover of the recently-released Collected Letters of Flora Crewe. He reveals the existence of another portrait of her by the same hand.

The play was first broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 21 April 1991, starring Felicity Kendal and Dame Peggy Ashcroft. It was subsequently turned into a stage play named Indian Ink, which gained a healthy attention because of a brief nude appearance by Felicity Kendal.

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