- Tom Stoppard Indian Inkknow, you are the first man to paint my toc-nails. Das: Actually, lam occupied in the folds of your skirt. FLORA: Ah. In that you are not the first. pas: You have been painted before? — but of course you have! Many times, I expect! FLORA: You know, Mr Das, your nature is much kinder than mine. (FLORA resumes, DAS resumes. ANISH DAS comes into the Shepperton garden. He has a soft briefcase; he sits in one of the garden chairs.) Mr Das, I have been considering whether to ask youa delicate question, as between friends and artists. pas: Oh, Miss Crewe, I am transported beyond my most fantastical hopes of our fellowship! This is a red-letter day without dispute! FLORA: If you are going to be so Indian Ishan’t ask it. pas: But I cannot be less Indian that Iam. FLORA: You could if you tried. I’m not sure I’m going to ask you now. pas: Then you need not, dear Miss Crewe! You considered. The unasked, the almost asked question, united us for a moment in its intimacy, we came together in your mind like a spark in a vacuum glass, and the redness of the day’s letter will not be denied. FLORA: You are still doing it, Mr Das. pas: You wish me to be less Indian? FLopa: I did say that but I think what I meant was for you to be more Indian, or at any rate Indian, not Englished-up and all ke a labrador and knocking things off tables with r tail — so wapgish of you, Mr Das, to compare my mind to a vacuum. You only do it with us, I don’t believe that teft to yourself you can’t have an ordinary conversation ut jumping backwards through hoops of delight, with pop: of delight, I think I mean; actually, I do know what n, I want you to be with me as you would be if J were me ! Oh dear, that is a mental ich has no counterpart in the material world.FLORA: So is a unicorn, but you can imagine it. pas: You can imagine it but you cannot mount it. FLORA: Imagining it was all I was asking in my case. pas: (Terribly discomfited) Oh! Oh, my gracious! —I had no intention — I assure you — FLORA: (Amused) No, no, you cannot unwag your very best wag. You cleared the table, the bric-a-brac is on the Wilton — the specimen vase, the snuff box, the souvenir of Broadstairs — (But she has misjudged.) DAS: (Anguished) You are cruel to me, Miss Crewe!ANISH: (Laughs) Usually, the education succeeded admirably! In Jummapur we were ‘loyal’ as you would say, we had been loyal to the British right through the first War of Independence. MRS SWAN: The. . .? What war was that? ANISH: The Rising of 1857. MRS SWAN: Oh, you mean the Mutiny. What did you call it? ANISH: Dear Mrs Swan, Imperial history is merely . . . no, no—I promise you I didn’t come to give you a history lesson. MRS SWAN: You seem ill-equipped to do so. We were your Romans, you know. We might have been your Normans. ANISH: And did you expect us to be grateful? MRS SWAN: That’s neither here nor there. I don’t suppose I’d have been grateful if a lot of Romans turned up and started laying down the law and teaching Latin and so forth. ‘What a cheek,’ is probably what I would have thought. ‘Go away, and take your roads and your baths with you.’ It doesn’t matter what I would have thought. It’s what I think now that matters. You speak English better than most young people I meet. Did you go to school here? ANISH: No, I went to a convent school in. . . You are spreading a net for me, Mrs Swan! MRS SWAN: What net would that be? Have some more cake. ANISH: Mrs Swan, you are a very wicked woman. You advance a Preposterous argument and try to fill my mouth with cake so I cannot answer you. I will resist you and your cake. We were the Romans! We were up to date when you were a backward nation. The foreigners who invaded you found a third-world country! Even when you discovered India in the age of Shakespeare, we already had our Shakespeares. And our science ~ architecture — our literature and art, we had a 17