An Inner Fury

Most Indian writing in English isn’t very good. perhaps because you can actually see the author thinking in some other language before he translates what he has to say into English.
However, I’ve begun to wonder whether there was a time when English educational policies in India did create a class of people now no longer in existence who had the ability to think in English and who did in face write amazingly well in the language.
I’ve just finished reading a book called ‘Some Inner Fury’ by Kamala Markandaya which was first published by Putnam in 1955. It’s a love story just as much as ‘Wuthering Heights’ is one. Set in the early 1940s in India, it tells the story of a rich, cultivated Hindu family whose Oxford-returned, sophisticated, son, Kitsamy, joins the civil service and whose other (adopted) son, Govind, joins the freedom struggle. It tells of the difficulties of the former’s traditional wife, Premala, in trying the please her husband. and it speaks of the love which develops between the daughter of the house, Mirabai, with one of Kit’s friends, Richard who becomes the ADC the Governor. Love each other as much as they may, the two ultimately find themselves torn apart by the struggle for independence; on opposite sides of the fence by default. Their relationship does not survive.
The book is an interesting study of India at a time of political upheaval even though it is very limited in its scope. Possibly, the family the author describes is one which belongs to her own class. The prose is understated and very elegant. And at times, heart wrenching.