Summary
Digby Kilgour, a young Catholic boy from Glasgow, Scotland, visits a risqué variety show with his mother, a single parent who works for the Singer company. Mother and son enjoy an independent, comfortable life until Digby's mother is fired for inciting a workers' strike. After her termination, Digby's mother spirals into depression and is forced to move in with her critical, judgmental mother. To cope, Digby devotes all his time to his education and learning to draw human anatomy. His mother's only consolation is Digby's academic success; however, Digby returns one day to find her dead by suicide, having hung herself using his school tie, an experience that traumatizes him for life.
In his early twenties, Digby is an accomplished surgeon but is unable to find a job in England due to his Catholic heritage and thick Scottish accent, so he accepts a position in the Indian Medical Service in Madras. On the ship to India, Digby quickly realizes that he knows very little about the nation and its fraught history with British colonizers. To his immense discomfort, he realizes on arrival that while he was oppressed in England, he is afforded great privileges as a white man in India. For example, he receives the services of a cook named Muthu and a higher position in the hospital than he feels he deserves.
Digby's supervisor, Civil Surgeon Claude Arnold, is unapologetically bigoted towards the Indian hospital staff and, on the rare occasion he shows up to work, is intoxicated. Mere hours after disembarking, Digby is asked to operate on a man with an enlarged scrotum, a condition "magnified" beyond any ailment he encountered in India. With the encouragement and assistance of Matron Honorine Charlton, Digby successfully performs the operation, leading to the pair's close friendship.
As he settles into life in Madras, Digby is tasked with running the "native" surgery wards, receiving medical advice from the Indian nurses and Licentiate Medical Practitioners Claude overlooked. One LMP, Krishnan, advises Digby to personally reassure his patients as an essential component of medical care, permanently altering Digby's understanding of his responsibilities as a surgeon. Despite Dibgy's limited experience, one of his patients, Aavudainayaki, refuses to let anyone but Digby remove her extensive goiter. Honorine brings Digby to renowned surgeon Dr. V. V. Ravichandran, who assists in the operation. Ravi then encourages Digby to develop personal relationships with patients to facilitate trust and healing. With this in mind, Digby personally attends to Aavudainayaki after her surgery when no nurse is available, saving her life when a complication arises. Later, Digby performs a life-saving surgery on Lena Mylin, an Englishwoman whose symptoms Claude Arnold dismissed. Going a step further, Digby uses his own blood to give Lena a transfusion, inspiring a familial relationship between them, as according to Lena, they are "blood now."
Digby attends a Christmas party at Claude Arnold's home in a neighborhood described as "England rendered on the canvas of Southern India." At the party, Digby meets Claude's wife, Celeste, and bonds with her over their shared love of art. Though his mother's death makes him wary of love and relationships, Digby is immediately attracted to Celeste and visits Mahabalipuram, a famous complex of stone sculptures that holds special significance for her. Later, Digby purchases a motorcycle, affectionately named Esmeralda, from Honorine's Anglo-Indian friends, Owen and Jennifer. While attending dinner at their home, he meets Jennifer's brother, Jeb, an aspiring Olympian and infamous playboy. A few days after attending the Anglo-Indian Fall Ball, Jeb arrives at Digby's clinic to have an abscess removed. However, Digby disagrees with Claude's diagnosis and suggests the affliction is a far more dangerous aneurysm. Claude, drunk and angry at being questioned, begins the operation without proper preparation and opens an artery. Jeb dies on the operating table, which Claude dismisses as "no harm done." Claude's illustrious family background protects him from immediate backlash, but word spreads that he willfully disregarded Digby's warning and is responsible for medical malpractice.
A scathing letter appears in the local paper calling for an investigation and the release of Jeb's autopsy report. The viceroy arrives in Madras to a crowd of angry protesters, and Claude's brother, the chief secretary to the viceroy, delivers the news that a hearing will be held to investigate the malpractice charges. Increasingly drunk and paranoid, Claude suggests that he and Celeste file for divorce on the fallacious grounds that Celeste and Digby had an affair, thus discrediting Digby's testimony. When Celeste visits Digby's apartment to warn him, the two succumb to their mutual attraction and loneliness, beginning a brief but intense affair. When Celeste finally comes clean about Claude's plan and her intention to leave Claude, Digby is furious at her deception, though he still professes his love to her. The two share a final, intimate goodbye, but wake up trapped in Digby's apartment as it burns from an overturned candle.
Analysis
Part Two contrasts Mariamma's lush, natural setting of Parambil with Digby's life in industrial Glasgow. The text uses grimy industrial imagery to convey the depressing backdrop of Digby's childhood and explore different manifestations of poverty and oppression. For example, Digby's favorite place is a smoke-filled variety show with a "roll-your-own" atmosphere and a ticket seller whose face is marred by physical violence. Digby's family apartment is cramped and so cold he has to wear gloves and a hat indoors. His family's poverty, Catholic heritage, and non-traditional family structure limit his opportunities and damage his self-esteem. While Mariamma is a victim of circumstances, denied an education because of her gender, and forced to marry at an early age, Digby receives an education, which he and his mother see as a salvation. Likewise, Mariamma's father insists that education would protect Mariamma from unfairness and dependency. However, the efficacy of education as a vehicle to break free of oppression is questioned when Digby is unable to secure work in England, which eventually compels him to move to Madras.
The question of education is best represented through the symbol of Digby's school tie, which his mother uses to hang herself. This symbolic choice indicates that a parent's obsession with their child's well-being and success can be intensely damaging to everyone involved. After she is terminated from her position at the Singer factory, Digby's mother focuses her entire identity and hope around Digby's future success, in the process destroying their relationship. This dynamic between Digby and his mother recalls Celeste's grief over her children leaving India. Claude, refusing to listen to Celeste's wants and needs, sends his children to England to be educated. He fears that growing up in India will cause his children to develop qualities he associates with Indian people, which he views as negative. In doing what he considers "best," he destroys his wife's relationship with their children.
Digby's experiences in Glasgow contribute further nuance to the theme of faith and superstition. Digby is nominally Catholic and is treated as inferior to his Protestant neighbors; his mother and other Catholics "are the lowest paid and do the roughest jobs." In Digby's upbringing, faith is not a personal journey, but an inescapable caste. Digby feels no connection to Catholicism, and conceptualizes "a God whose name is Singer," meaning the Singer company that creates sewing machines, trains, and other industrial machinery. The Singer clock looms over the city as its prominent landmark, making Digby feel observed and protected, just like Mariamma feels about her conception of the Christian God. In these two conceptions of divinity, "God" is a force that controls and shapes a person's life. During Digby's childhood, the Singer company provided his mother with a comfortable life, but after she "sinned" and "rebelled" by organizing a worker's strike, she was punished and lost her job, changing Digby's life forever.
In Madras, Digby feels intensely uncomfortable, as he is privileged for being white under the colonial British government, which oppressed him in Scotland. This concept, that oppression and privilege are fluid, arbitrary forces that shape lives, is furthered as Digby meets a variety of professionals in Madras. His Anglo-Indian friends, who live in gated, insular communities, struggle to find identity and belonging as they are treated as inferior to white British expatriates but superior to Indians. One way the text examines this tension between class and privilege is through accents. Digby attempts to hide his Scottish accent to be accepted by his British colleagues, but his internal monologue is written in the Scottish vernacular to show his authentic sense of self, especially in moments of shame or discomfort, like when he attends Cladue's Christmas party. When speaking with Honorine, with whom he feels comfortable and accepted, Digby often lapses into his natural, unaffected accent. Similarly, Anglo-Indian characters like Jennifer and Owen attempt to mimic British accents and cadences to gain acceptance in English society. Celeste, who spent her entire life in India, is criticized for her accent by Claude and other members of the British Raj, who call her "chee-chee," an offensive term that marks her as being more Indian than British.
Part Two expands on the motif of using medical imagery and anatomical vocabulary to demonstrate different ways of viewing and connecting with others. As a child, Digby draws women's bodies and anatomical models to escape his depressing reality. Later, he draws internal organs on Celeste's body to prolong their time together and turn her "inside out." When reflecting on their sexual encounters, Digby uses scientific names for body parts, compartmentalizing his emotions and feelings. This motif connects to the repeated imagery of portraiture. Digby and Celeste analyze and discuss different works of art and how they succeed or fail to capture the "truth" of a human subject. Celeste shows Digby a simple kalighat painting, which Digby feels conveys the subject's humanity and truth through minimal lines. Likewise, when studying the sculptures at Mahabalipuram, Digby and Celeste discuss how exaggerating a subject's anatomy is more evocative than an anatomically correct sculpture. Art and medicine are thematically connected; as a doctor, Digby must force himself to see patients not as bodies or a collection of organs but as a complete person whose emotions and psychology influence their well-being and healing.
Water is used symbolically to connect Part One and Part Two, foreshadowing how the different storylines will eventually weave together. Just as Mariamma traversed water to enter her new life at Parambil, Digby travels to India from England aboard a steamer ship, reflecting that "the English Channel, the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean" are one, despite their apparent differences. This concept argues that all humanity, regardless of time, place, or culture, is connected through shared experiences, such as water, death, and sickness. The reflection takes on an additional meaning when viewed in the context of colonialism. Oceans and seas flow into one another regardless of arbitrary, human-made borders, yet in the colonial system, nations are divided and conquered, inextricably linking one country's well-being to another's.
To explore the theme of healing, Part Two presents Claude Arnold and Ravi as foils. Claude is a privileged British doctor who consistently disregards his patient's concerns, neglects to follow up on their progress, and even accidentally kills a patient by refusing to confront his own pride and admit his misdiagnosis. Claude is also bigoted and refuses to work with Indian patients. Ravi, by contrast, views medicine as a sacred vocation, going above and beyond to ensure his patients find health and healing. Ravi is a Brahmin, the highest and most privileged caste, but rejects caste distinctions by treating patients of every background, welcoming patients into his home, and feeding anyone who asks. Ravi's style of medicine creates lifelong relationships, as many of his former patients loyally work for him. Digby adopts Ravi's attitude, building trust with patients. Originally, Digby cannot understand why his patient cannot resume normal bowel functions after a successful surgery, but is then encouraged to reassure the patient personally, which has a significant healing impact. Later, Digby takes "great pains" to greet his patients, explain procedures to them, pronounce their names properly, and monitor them when no other staff is willing or available. Though Claude's treatment of patients is clearly negligent and cruel, he suffers few consequences; he dismisses the experience of his LMP colleagues, yet ironically, it is Claude who is the incompetent one. The personality differences between Ravi and Claude call for an inclusive, neutral approach to medicine that prioritizes ethics and bedside manner.
