Review: The Tainted, by Cauvery Madhavan

Its spring 1920 in the small military town of Nandagiri in south-east India.
Colonel Aylmer, commander of the Royal Irish Kildare Rangers, is in charge. A distance away, decently hidden from view, lies the native part of Nandagiri with its heaving bazaar, reeking streets and brothels.
Everyone in Nandagiri knows their place and the part they were born to play – with one exception. The local Anglo-Indians, tainted by their mixed blood, belong . . . nowhere.

When news of the Black and Tans’ atrocities back in Ireland reaches
the troops in India, even their priest cannot cool the men’s hot-headed rage.
Politics vie with passion as Private Michael Flaherty pays court to Rose, Mrs Aylmer’s Anglo-Indian maid . . . but mutiny brings heroism and heartbreak in equal measure. Only the arrival of Colonel Aylmer’s grandson Richard, some 60 years later, will set off the reckoning, when those who were parted will be reunited, and those who were lost will be found again.

My Review

Thanks to Anne, of Random Things Tours, for organising the blog tour and to the author and publisher for a copy of this book.

I cried at the end. Totally worth the snotty mess I made of my face though, it was marvellous.

Nandigari, India, 1920. Rose Twomey is the Anglo-Indian daughter of an Irish ex-soldier who stayed on in India. Michael Flaherty is the regiment commander’s Batman. They fall in love. One fateful day in Madras they’re left alone, waiting out a riot in a doctors house.

Michael gets involved in the Irish regiment’s rebellion. Rose is packed off to her aunt and uncle in Madras when her delicate condition becomes obvious and the attempted abortion at a local brothel doesn’t work.

1982 – the grandson of the regimental commander is putting together an exhibition based on his grandfather’s paintings and come to Nandigari to take contemporary photographs of the same scenes. He’s staying with Mahon, the Collector for the region. He’s introduced to Rose and Michael’s grandchildren there, one in the Forest Service and the other a music teacher. This unlikely group, plus three friends Mahon has made since he arrived in Nandigari become close friends and face the past as well as the future.

The Twomey’s are Anglo-Indian. Their grandparents weren’t able to marry because Rose Twomay had an Anglo-Indian mother, from the British Army Assylum for Orphaned Girls, meaning her mother was Indian and her father was probably a British soldier who after being sent home didn’t want to admit that he had mixed-race children. As part of the Anglo-Indian community they were too high for the Indians and too low for the British during the Raj, and post-Independence they were too British for the Indians and too proud to acknowledge their mixed heritage. Always outsiders.

Richard Aylmer, the grandson of the last commander of his regiment in India, is ‘Anglo-Irish’, Protestant, and from a posh family. He too is in an outsider class in Ireland. Not Catholic, English ancestry, not Irish enough for the Irish, not British enough for the British.

Except, where the Anglo-Indians were never in a place of power and were despised by both the Indians and the British, he is only despised by the Irish, for coming from a family that had wealth and power at the expense of the Irish Catholic majority.

Sometime soon, Britain is going to collectively realise our ancestors messed up and everyone is still living with the consequences of colonialism.

With the background of stories people tell themselves about who they are, their origins and place in the world, there are the individual stories of people, and Madhavan constructs a brilliant tale of love, loss and confused identity playing out over 60 years.

I liked the characters. Michael and Rose are so sweet, attempting to build a relationship in difficult circumstances. Rose has dreams of ‘going home’ to Ireland, a place she has never been, and although Rose is a massive snob, she’s a product of her time with the inherited colourism her mother inculcated while she was a child, and the racism everyone around her has.

The 80s set are a diverse, interesting bunch. I really thought there would be fisticuffs between Richard and Gerry or Richard and Mahon at some point, but they were all very sensible and non-melodramatic.

There was a great deal of poignancy in the meetings with ‘Uncle Ronnie’, with his ancient attitudes to Indians and Mahon’s mother who is equally prejudiced against Anglo-Indians. That they get on very well with each other is a great, but subtle, irony.

I was totally immersed in this book for several hours, it’s amazing I barely noticed the chill in the garden while I was reading about warm, damp, sticky India and the development of relationships between diverse groups of people.

Madhavan uses this thoroughly enjoyable novel to highlight attitudes to mixed race people in modern India and the consequences of Colonialism on Ireland and India in 1920 and 1980.

Highly recommended for fans of historical fiction. And a good love story.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Cauvery Madhavan was born and educated in India. She worked as a
copywriter in her hometown of Chennai (formerly Madras). Cauvery moved
to Ireland thirty-three years ago and has been in love with the country ever
since. Here other books are: Paddy Indian and The Uncoupling. She lives
with her husband and three children in beautiful County Kildare.