The Rains Came

Thomas 'Tom' Ransome:
[showing Lady Esketh the Maharajah's summer palace] That's a Rembrandt. That's a Buddhist prayer wheel.

Major Rama Safti:
[translating Hindu song] "Would my lyre were of jade, its strings of pure-spun gold, that I might sing with merit of your beauty... in your heart my love has found a home, and it can never die..."

Lady Edwina Esketh:
You sober enough to take me to the party?

Thomas 'Tom' Ransome:
[taking a drink] Almost.

Lady Edwina Esketh:
Some night you're going to fall flat on your face and people will begin to suspect you drink.

Mrs. Simon:
It's my last tea this season. We'll be leaving for Simla before the rains. You'll be going too, of course?

Lily Hoggett-Egburry:
Naturally. No one stays in Ranchipur during the monsoon.

Thomas 'Tom' Ransome:
No? Only about five million people.

Maharani:
What is Lady Esketh doing at the hospital?

Thomas 'Tom' Ransome:
Every conceivable filthy and drudging task.

Maharani:
Yes, I suppose Miss MacDaid would have seen to that.

Lady Edwina Esketh:
I've been hearing dreadful things about you. It seems you've become a shockingly useful citizen.

Major Rama Safti:
The world's not as bad as you think, Tom.

Thomas 'Tom' Ransome:
No? Only trying to commit suicide as fast as it knows how.

Major Rama Safti:
I don't agree with you. Here in Ranchipur we're trying to make it a little better.

Thomas 'Tom' Ransome:
The whole world?

Major Rama Safti:
OUR world - India in general, Ranchipur in particular.

Thomas 'Tom' Ransome:
I rather like the old place, just as it is.

Major Rama Safti:
You see it as an artist. I see it as an Indian. My people are crying for help. After centuries of disease and poverty and superstition.

Thomas 'Tom' Ransome:
I hope I'm not keeping you from your guests.

Fern Simon:
Oh, they're not *my* guests. That's mother's idea of "high society." They're all excited because YOU'RE here.

Thomas 'Tom' Ransome:
Really? Should I be flattered?

Fern Simon:
They say dreadful things about you...

Thomas 'Tom' Ransome:
[playfully whispers] What sort of things?

Fern Simon:
That you're a drunkard, and a bounder, and a remittance man... They'll hang around you just the same, because your father was an earl.

Thomas 'Tom' Ransome:
[Describing Ranchipur to Lady Edwina Esketh] See, in Ranchipur, the important things in life are the elemental things, such as crops, starvation, and weather. In Europe, when someone says "It looks like rain," in all probability, he's trying to make polite conversation. But here, where people die as easily as they're born, they're speaking in terms of life and death. You'll see what I mean, if you're still here when the rains come. You'll see them overnight turn the fields, the gardens and the jungles from a parched and burning desert, into a mass of green that seems to live, to writhe and to devour the walls, the trees and the houses.

Lady Edwina Esketh:
[Noticing a handsome Indian man at a nearby table] Who's the pale copper Apollo?

Thomas 'Tom' Ransome:
Major Safti.

Lady Edwina Esketh:
Not bad - not bad at ALL.

Thomas 'Tom' Ransome:
Well, don't waste your time. He's a surgeon and a scientist. Any interest he *might* have in romance is purely biological.

Lady Edwina Esketh:
You make him sound even MORE exciting.

Lady Edwina Esketh:
What would you prescribe for a patient about to die of galloping boredom?

Major Rama Safti:
Well, I imagine that the Maharani will see to it that you're properly entertained.

Lady Edwina Esketh:
How?

Major Rama Safti:
Well, the usual routine with guests, I believe, is to show them first the waterworks, then, in order, the narrow gauge railway, the hospital, the zoo, and the asylum for the insane.

Lady Edwina Esketh:
[slight sarcasm] How exciting.

Major Rama Safti:
Yes, isn't it?

Lady Edwina Esketh:
[Speaking to Tom Ransome] That's why we didn't get on. You've always wanted a woman to treat you like a god. *I* treated you as if you were just as bad as myself.

Maharani:
[Major Safti has just been handed an important note] What is it, Major?

Major Rama Safti:
It has come sooner than I expected: several cases of the plague in the Sweepers Quarters. On top of that, half the water in Ranchipur must be polluted.

Maharani:
Do what you can to keep the plague from spreading. Burn down the whole Quarter if you must.

Maharani:
[Regarding what to do about Lady Esketh] I want to do the right thing. I'd trample her without mercy. But then, of course, I was brought up in the hills, where charity is a sign of weakness.

Thomas 'Tom' Ransome:
Edwina... I'm afraid I've come to spill jam on your party dress.

Lady Edwina Esketh:
What do you mean?

Thomas 'Tom' Ransome:
The Maharani is sending you away in the morning.

Fern Simon:
[Lady Esketh is giving away her jewels to Fern] But I can't take them.

Lady Edwina Esketh:
Don't be an idiot. If you and Tom have children, your son might be the Earl of Nolan. He'd have a wife, and she could wear them to boring dinner parties, and tell how they'd been left to her by a shameless wench called Lady Esketh, who died in Ranchipur during the Great Disaster of 1938. We're such snobs at home. We like stories like that.

Maharani:
[Last lines, spoken to Major Safti, who is assuming leadership of Ranchipur] The time is here, Rama. Your people are waiting.