- Amitabha Roy: All this palm reading was just an excuse to hold your hand.
- Karuna Gupta: You think it wasn't an excuse for me to offer it?
- Bimal Gupta: [speaking to Mr. Roy] You know what this place does to you? It drives you to drink. Make a note of this! It drives you to drink. Every blasted fellow on this blasted plantation... drinks! There's no way around it.
- Bimal Gupta: Mr. Roy, I haven't bored you, have I?
- Amitabha Roy: Writers aren't easily bored.
- Bimal Gupta: Hmm?
- Amitabha Roy: They're always looking for new material.
- Karuna Gupta: I haven't seen a Bengali film in ages. It would be easy when we go to Calcutta, but you never let me.
- Bimal Gupta: [laughing disparagingly] Bengali films!
- Amitabha Roy: Why do you laugh?
- Bimal Gupta: You know, Mr. Roy, the Bengalis of this present generation have no moral fiber. And that is reflected in everything they do. Everything! Whether films, or politics, or...
- Karuna Gupta: Must you really speak this way when we have a Bengali guest?
- Bimal Gupta: [addressing Mr. Roy] Certainly! Criticize Bengalis to a Bengali, but praise them to others. Right?
- Amitabha Roy: Right.
- [Bimal Gupta toasts him and laughs]
- Bimal Gupta: [Gupta, quite intoxicated, speaks while Mr. Roy passively listens] Each garden... You know, Mr. Roy... each garden has its own method of cultivation. And the taste of the tea grown in each garden is different. Just by tasting the tea, we know. From just one sip we can tell you what garden it came from. And it all comes from experience... and hard work. Bloody hard work, Mr. Roy... come rain, come shine... Oh, God, it's a tough life!
- Bimal Gupta: I didn't like it much at first either. And whisky - I hated. Now I love it. And it helps to forget - the boredom and tragedy.
- Bimal Gupta: [to Ami] Your loss is my gain. Or rather, our gain. Right darling?
- Karuna Gupta: You talk too much.
- Bimal Gupta: Don't tell me you're putting me in your story!
- Amitabha Roy: Would you object?
- Bimal Gupta: Certainly not! But, on one condition.
- Amitabha Roy: What?
- Bimal Gupta: Don't make me the villain. That would upset my wife.
- Amitabha Roy: Karuna! Must you be so terribly polite? I can't bear it when you speak to me so formally. This is too much.
- Karuna Gupta: You prefer I be rude?
- Karuna Gupta: You're angry.
- Amitabha Roy: Why would I be?
- Karuna Gupta: Because I came to your room. You have a sullen look on your face.
- Amitabha Roy: That's how I look when I haven't shaved.
- Amitabha Roy: I know you're used to all kinds of comforts. I've been to your house. I've seen it with my own eyes.
- Karuna Gupta: My house? Is that all you saw? Did you see the person there? Did you recognize her? This last year and a half, haven't I told you over and over that when I'm with you - - maybe you thought it was just romantic drivel. I don't blame you. It's hard to really know a person.
- Amitabha Roy: Just give me a little more time.
- Karuna Gupta: That's impossible.
- Amitabha Roy: Why not try?
- Karuna Gupta: What's the use, Ami? What you really need isn't more time, but something else.
- Karuna Gupta: It's just a cold lunch today, you know.
- Amitabha Roy: Cold things are all I expect from you.
- Bimal Gupta: Mr. Roy, you were asking about neighbors.
- Karuna Gupta: Shall I pour the tea.
- Bimal Gupta: It's not that no one else lives around here. All our staff - clerks, teahouse babus - they're all within a mile.
- Karuna Gupta: Sugar?
- Amitabha Roy: Two spoons.
- Bimal Gupta: But you can't really call them neighbors, because outside working hours, it's a sort of unwritten law that you're not to see them.
- Bimal Gupta: There's a rigid caste system operating in these parts. A manager can only mix socially with another manager. If you were as assistant manager, I wouldn't be sitting here having breakfast with you. Atkinson, T.P. Chatterjee, Mehra, Terry Waters - they're all my equals.
- Amitabha Roy: And - you accept this system as it is?
- Bimal Gupta: The British maintained this system for 150 years. Am I to carry out a one-man revolution?
- Bimal Gupta: At first I couldn't quite accept it either. It kept bothering me. Then I realized that if I just accept it, life becomes easier, smoother. So, now I just don't think about it.
- Bimal Gupta: Mr. Roy, it's very simple. If you have a conscience, it gives you trouble. You drowned it in alcohol.
- Karuna Gupta: Real love is in the heart. There are no crowds there. No one to bother us or keep an eye on us.
- Amitabha Roy: I know the answer to my own question. You can't be happy. You two can't have a single thing in common. Why won't you admit it?
- Karuna Gupta: Maybe I didn't want to be happy.