But he has misjudged.

MRS SWAN (Angrily) We made you a proper country! And when we left you fell straight to pieces like Humpty Dumpty! Look at the map! You should feel nothing but shame!

ANISH Oh, yes … I am a guest here and I have been …

MRS SWAN (Calming down) No, only provocative. Will you be going home?

ANISH (Bewildered) I … would you like me to go?

MRS SWAN (Equally bewildered) No. What do you mean?

ANISH (Understanding) Oh—home! I didn’t mean I was a guest in England. England is my home now. I have spent half my life here. I married here.

MRS SWAN An English girl?

ANISH Yes. We met at art school.

MRS SWAN (Approvingly) Artists together.

ANISH Actually she was not a student, she was earning money as a model. Life class, you see.

MRS SWAN Of course. Is she still your model?

ANISH No. My work is not figurative now.

MRS SWAN What is it now?

ANISH Well, deconstructive.

MRS SWAN What a shame.

ANISH I can still draw if I wish. May I draw you?

MRS SWAN Oh no, the last thing I need—

ANISH No, for myself.

MRS SWAN Oh. Why?

ANISH Only a little sketch with a pencil. We must not resist when life strives to close one of its many circles!

MRS SWAN Is that Hinduism?

ANISH AND DAS Oh … I don’t know. Perhaps.

MRS SWAN Well, it sounds very east of Suez. All right then. You may draw me.

ANISH It will make us friends.

Anish takes an artist’s block from his briefcase and begins to draw her.

Flora and Das sit at the table with lemonade.

FLORA While having tiffin on the verandah of my bungalow I spilled kedgeree on my dungarees and had to go to the gymkhana in my pyjamas looking like a coolie.

DAS I was buying chutney in the bazaar when a thug escaped from the choky and killed a box-wallah for his loot, creating a hullabaloo and landing himself in the mulligatawny.

FLORA I went doolally at the durbar and was sent back to Blighty in a dooley feeling rather dikki with a cup of char and a chit for a chotapeg.

DAS Yes, and the burra sahib who looked so pukka in his topee sent a coolie to the memshib—

FLORA No, no. You can’t have memsahib and sahib, that’s cheating—and anyway I’ve already said coolie.

DAS I concede, Miss Crewe. You are the Hobson-Jobson champion!

FLORA You are chivalrous, Mr Das. So I’ll confess I had help. I found a whole list of Anglo-Indian words in my bedside drawer, for the benefit of travellers.

DAS But I know both languages, so you still win on handicap.

FLORA Where did you learn everything·, Mr Das?

DAS From books. I like Dickens and Browning, and Shakespeare, of course—but my favourite is Agatha Christie! The Mysterious Affair at Styles!—oh, the woman is a genius! But I would like to write like Macaulay.