Spoiler warning: this recap discusses events in season one, episode six of Channel 4’s Indian Summers.
Catch up with Rhik’s episode five blog
Well. After five weeks, I’d started thinking of Indian Summers as a GP’s questionnaire, inasmuch as it was testing my patience. But tonight they pulled the chocks away, and the thing took glorious flight. This was a humdinger. There was lots of exciting violence, the thing moved along at a clip, and at the end I was even cheering for Ralph. Well, not quite at the end. We’ll get to that.
We kick off with a creepy cold open, in which a woman steals into Manu Sood’s house, trying on his beautiful saris under cover of darkness. They’re lovely saris. Like all businessmen, he obviously appreciates the comfort of a woman’s fabric next to his skin. (It transpires the saris belonged to his late wife, so now I feel awful.)
The episode proper begins with Alice and Madeleine exploring erotic carvings at a ruined temple, the bloody saucy fillies. They’re stopped in their tracks by a cobra rearing up on the path before them. They’re quite charmed by it, but nonetheless a passing army man, dashing Captain Farquhar, steps in, blowing it away into a billion pieces, and signaling that he is a man of action. He’s also wearing tight knee-high boots for men, an article of clothing I’ve only ever seen on Superman before now.
Aafrin and Alice should be riding into the sunset (with Alice in front, because Aafrin is rubbish with horses), But Aafrin is too troubled to be happy. When a glowing Alice comes to see him at work, he busies himself with some monumentally boring admin, and doesn’t engage with her. There’s a beautiful moment when she hands him a note that says simply, ‘Look at me,” – but Aafrin is not equal to it.
Poor Ian. At the club, Cynthia tells him he can’t come in, because he’s wearing trainers. Not really, it’s because he works for an Indian and she’s a racist. However, at Manu Sood’s, a Tamil woman Ian kindly employed last week is suspected of the theft of Sood’s nice things. Sood goes nuts, whaling on his employees, throwing Ian out of his house. Though surrounded by tea leaves, the future is still unreadable for this relationship. I hope they work it out.
At the Dalal’s, Bapi has invited Sita to dine with the family. Sita can eat with her hands, a frosty Roshana advises, if she is not used to the cutlery. Yet it’s not Sita who’s the troublemaker, but Sunni. She rails at the men in the room, accusing Aafrin of being the subcontinental equivalent of an Uncle Tom. “Look at you, so pink and fat. Maybe one day you will be viceroy,” she mocks her lean, brown brother. She rebukes her anglophile father too. “Only this morning I caught him praying for the Prince of Wales, who has a summer cold.”
The dinner has important currents running through it. The siblings debate the pragmatic “treachery” of collaboration, versus the idealistic, violent “purity” of revolution. It also points to the complexity of Indian attitudes to the British, an ambivalence that endures. “The British gave you the education to sit here scorning your own father,” Bapi reminds her. It’s one of several scenes that lift the episode. And with Sita sitting awkwardly across from Aafrin, there’s another woman whose eyes he cannot meet.
Let’s talk about Ralph. Because Dougie spoke to Adam’s mother as she was thrown out of the party, Ralph now has to bring him close, the way he did with Aafrin. Like a spider paralysing and then cosseting his flies, he offhandedly offers to make vital repairs in the schoolhouse, and then makes his way to the lake, where Adam’s mother, Jaya, has been living, a bit like Gollum.
No surprises, Adam is the spawn of Ralph. What is surprising is the relationship between the parents. Jaya is clearly troubled, talking in riddles, never at rest. Her eyes are poor, she says. She thinks Adam has the evil eye, and has tried to bleed it out of him. Ralph tells her he wants to provide for her. To control her, or because he cares? The tenderness of the scene, which ends with Jaya and Ralph resting their foreheads on one another, suggests the latter. To revive the mystery of this show’s central character – who we saw eating with his hands in the first episode – is rather wonderful.
In the grip of complex emotions, or one very simple one, Ralph returns home and rogers Madeleine, which seems to be her main function in the show. They do it backwards, standing up at a desk, a position I believe is known as “the under secretary”.
Captain Farquar has bold designs on Alice, asking if she’s spoken for. “No one speaks for me,” replied Alice, casually breaking my heart, which seems to be her main function in the show. Admiring Aafrin’s portrait of Madeleine, he asks that the artist draw one of Alice. “I’ll take it up the mountain, it’ll keep me warm.” This is a very man-of-action request. He’ll probably end up rolling it into a snorkel and using it to escape a haunted island.
At the portrait sitting, the sagging weight of Alice and Aafrin’s awkwardness collapses. Alice reveals her marriage, her child upstairs, that she loves him. Aafrin tells her of his sick father, and the burden of his responsibilities. He cannot afford to be reckless – but clearly loves her too. He agrees to meet her child, but scuttles out of the house while she brings him down. I know, responsibilities, but don’t make a woman get a baby and then leave while she’s doing it. Nul points, Aafrin.
In the lodge dining room, Wolfheart Flashpants shows his true colours. He’s actually a friend of Alice’s husband, tells her she has kidnapped her son, and now he intends to blackmail her for sex. Wow. He probably planted that snake, just so he could get to her. He’s probably related to it.
I never thought I’d say this, but: go, Ralph! He borrows the captain, who’s needed for some tug of war sports day hi-jinks outside. “You don’t mind me joshing your little sister, do you?” winks the khaki cad. “Of course not,” replies Ralph, before smoothly pushing him down the stairs, shattering his face and leaving him in a pool of blood. I guess he did mind a little bit.
More violence follows, though less inspiring. Leena intercedes at a meeting between Adam and Jaya, and is rewarded with a kick to the stomach, and nearly a rock to the head. (It sort of makes sense that this is the woman Ralph may be most connected to.) At night, Jaya is assaulted at the lake where she waits for Ralph. She is held under the water firmly, and drowned.
It’s a brutal end to an explosive episode. Who’s the murderer? I really hope it’s not Ralph. It surely couldn’t be Leena. Protective Dougie? The storylines, dialogue, and acting stepped up this week. It’s as if the careful plotting of the previous month has been abandoned and they’ve just gone hell for leather, chucking in new ingredients, seeing what will blow up quickest.
What’s next? Is Gandhi going to turn up, to slap the viceroy right in the kisser? Will Coffin and Kaiser finally get it on? Will Ralph turn out to be a werewolf? I can’t wait.
Most extraneous mule story
Trying to soften his wife’s attitude to Sita, Bapi tells a touching story about the mules under his care in the army, which, when capture was imminent, stayed out of loyalty and were shot, rather than running away. “I want to tell Aafrin to run too,” Bapi concludes, “whenever the world tells him to stop.”
Most not buying the mule story
Roshana quickly discerns the beautiful mule story isn’t really much of an analogy, and counters in kind. “She’s not even especially pretty. Such a long nose and thin lips,” is her surreal response, as if describing an elephant.
Most gratifying medical negligence
Looking to the justly battered Captain Farquhar, Cynthia decides to forego Simla’s finest doctors. “Get hold of the horse chappie. He’s had a few but I dare say he can stitch.”
Most Chuckle Brothers interlude
Sarah takes a rest from being a nosy, malign parker this week. Her main action involves getting stuck up a ladder on her way to visit Dougie, who’s fixing the roof. I believe she stays there for the rest of the episode. Seeing her in a fix, their son offers her nimbu pani. “It’s lemonade,” she corrects him. That’s Sarah.
Most lads on tour moment
At the erotic temple, the guide explains to Farquar that “the important ones are around the back.” “Aren’t they always!” he replies, like Jay from the Inbetweeners, just about stifling an implied WAHEYYY! Thinking about it, it doesn’t even make that much sense.
