Brinda Charry found inspiration, she writes in her author’s note, for her debut novel The East Indian, from a little known piece of US history. Dating from almost the first days of the English settlement in the early 1600s, servants and laborers from India arrived in colonial Virginia and Maryland via London, having been England in the first place as servants to officials of the East India Company. Charry explored this piece of history and set her story around the first-known Indian immigrant, a young Tamil man who went by the name of Tony. The result is a fascinating story in itself—Tony’s adventures, sometimes against his will and sometimes by choice—complemented by vivid writing.
The story begins in Tony’s birthplace of Armagon, one of the earliest British settlements in India. It’s the early 1600s and Tony is the son of a courtesan. He doesn’t know his father and his mother is murky about any details pertaining to this mystery man, so Tony has to rely on his own memories to understand his background.
The earliest memories I have of my birthplace feature salt—acres of it in translucent flats that glistened in the sun and gleamed in the moonlight, silver mountains of it harvested and brought to the warehouses, and smaller mounds piled in bullock-drawn carts. The only whiter thing I was to see in my life was snow. Even the air was saturated with salt, and the townspeople sweated saltier than any other people in the world.
This passage hints at what’s to come, that Tony will travel to cooler shores. Charry also includes such historical characters as Francis Day and Andrew Cogan, the founders of Madras (now Chennai). Day is a client of Tony’s mother and encourages young Tony to go on an adventure after a Portuguese fortune-teller declares that Tony will “cross all the seas in the world and go to the place where the sun sets.” Tony sails to London and spends a short time there, which includes going to the Globe Theatre to watch A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He is soon abducted on the streets against his will and put onto a ship headed to Virginia.
Apart from us spirited boys, all of whom ceased struggling and protesting after the first few hours on board, our fellow passengers were dozens of men and women—carpenters, cordwainers, candlemakers, bookbinders, beggars, leatherworkers, minstrels, plowmen, grooms, spinsters, wives, widows, rogues, vagabonds, and other sundry folk—some of whom had been lured on board with food, drink, tobacco, and promises of a better life, some of whom had been bound to masters already settled in Virginia.

The title of the book comes from a name Tony is called in London, which carries over to his new life in colonial America. He had always thought of himself as Tamil, but once he’s in London and later in Virginia, people refer to him as East Indian, too often confused in colonial America with Native Americans, also referred to as Indians.
Still a teenager, Tony becomes an indentured servant, but doesn’t stay in one place or with one owner very long. He is “won” in a game of dice when his master wagers Tony. Tony meets slaves from Africa, as well as a free African landowner. As the fortune-teller predicted back in India, Tony certainly has his share of adventures, and towards the end of the story becomes an apprentice to a Dr Joseph Herman, a German Jewish convert to the Church of England, only because he felt the British would not trust a Jewish doctor. Herman becomes a mentor to Tony, who fibs his way into Herman’s practice as a physician’s assistant. But young Tony learns quickly and helps Herman with surgeries and his apothecary business.
Doctor Herman had already told me about the solemn oaths of physicians—that of the Jewish doctor Moses Maimonides, who wrote that Providence had appointed doctors to watch over the life and health of all of God’s creatures, and also of the oath in the Hippocratic Corpus: I will do no harm…Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course.
After more adventures and marriage to Herman’s maid, an indentured servant from Africa, Tony realizes that his hopes of someday returning “home” are dashed. But as far as he’s concerned, that’s not such a bad thing because he’s learned to make the most of it.
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