- Amal: All done with studies, exams, professors, cutting classes.
- Charulata: What's left? Foolishness and mischief?
- Amal: Poetry. Rhythm. You know, I was thinking.
- Charulata: What?
- Amal: All of life is like a rhythm. Birth, death. Day - night. Happiness - sorrow. Meeting - parting. Like the waves on the ocean, now rising - now falling. One complements the other.
- Bhupati Dutta: How do we go on living? Trust, faith - are these just empty words? Is there no honesty? Is it all just a sham and lies?
- Bhupati Dutta: You missed the most important thing - my editorial.
- Amal: What's this? Criticizing the government?
- Bhupati Dutta: Why not? Why not, Amal? Why are they carrying on the Afghan campaign? Because England's prestige in Europe is at stake. But India bears the cost. Why? Should we support this? And what about the Press Act? Three years now and they haven't changed it. And what about the Civil Service scheme? What about the Arms Act? The salt tax? The rent tax? The British government is running the country - fine. But the business of running the country, the Indians have no say. Why? There is no representation. They've left no scope for that. Am I wrong to condemn it?
- Amal: What if you're arrested?
- Bhupati Dutta: Why? To be outspoken is not necessarily to be disloyal.
- Amal: Good Lord - sedition!
- Bhupati Dutta: You think we can't keep the paper going? The only way is the way of honesty. What you're suggesting isn't honest. It's the way of prostitution.
- Amal: Cousin, "The Lotus" accepted my essay.
- Bhupati Dutta: "Light of the Moonless Night"?
- Amal: No. "Dark of the Sun".
- Bhupati Dutta: The British have a phrase: "the idle rich." I intend to prove them wrong. Just having money doesn't mean you're lazy, does it?
- Bhupati Dutta: You know, when I hear Suren Banerjee speak - Someday I'll explain this business of politics to you.
- Bhupati Dutta: You're very lonely aren't you?
- Charulata: Oh, I'm used to it now.
- Bhupati Dutta: Loneliness isn't something to get used to, Charu.
- Bhupati Dutta: I have my Charulata. I need nothing else. Plays, novels, poetry - I don't need such things.
- Bhupati Dutta: Let me see a copy. Twenty-fourth issue of "The Sentinel." Dated, April the ninth, 1879.
- [Amal takes the just printed newspaper out of Bhupati's hands]
- Bhupati Dutta: Careful! It's still wet.
- Amal: Very nice name.
- Bhupati Dutta: That was Nishikanta's idea. The motto was mine.
- Amal: "Truth Survives." But will the paper survive?
- Umapada: It's a political paper. No sizzle, no spice. How can it survive without all that?
- Bhupati Dutta: You mean silly satire and saucy news? All the scandals of the marketplace? No, Umapada. No. No. I'd sooner give it all up.
- Umapada: But I need motivation. There's no rudder, no mast. This ship just might sink.
- Bhupati Dutta: We have a rudder! I hold the rudder and I'm not letting go. And our mast? The paper's truth and integrity.
- Bhupati Dutta: See here, Umapada. You know what this paper is to me? Your sister's rival.
- [laughs]
- Bhupati Dutta: But don't let that slip to Charulata.
- Charulata: [discussing the writings of Bankim-babu] What descriptions! His women are so beautiful! So much perfection isn't right. They make me feel ugly. They're all so beautiful. Mrinalini's beautiful, Radharanfs beautiful, Saibalini's beautiful, Kapalkundala's beautiful...
- Amal: And Kundanandini?
- Charulata: She's beautiful too, but not perfect.
- Amal: Lutfunnessa's not perfect either. She's too tall and her lips are bit thin.
- Charulata: And she's dark-skinned.
- Charulata: [singing] Every bud, And every blossom, Nods and sways, In the gentle breeze, Rippling, laughing, In wave and billow, The river flows, With carefree ease, The cuckoo roams, From bower to bower, Cuckoo, cuckoo, Cuckoo, she cries, Deep within, My head is yearning, Alas, alas...
- Amal: O river! O youth! O time! O world! You too can only march onward. You never turn back along the path strewn with memory's gilded pebbles. Only the mind of man looks back. The rest of creation never does.
- Bhupati Dutta: England!
- Amal: The land of Shakespeare.
- Bhupati Dutta: Why just Shakespeare? Burke, Macaulay, Gladstone!
- Amal: [singing] I've seen you, In the depths of my head, I've seen you, In the depths of my head, O fair one from afar. I turn my ear to the sky, And hear your song go by, I turn my ear to the sky, And hear your song go by, I dedicate my life to you, O fair one from afar, I dedicate my life to you, O fair one from afar. After roaming heaven and earth, Here I am in this new land, After roaming heaven and earth, Here I am in this new land, Now I stand at your door, Now I stand at your door, O fair one from afar, O fair one from afar. O fair one from afar, O fair one from afar...
- Bhupati Dutta: Big news - an election in England. We're all very excited. The party in power now, the Tories, will never do India any good. So we all want the other party, the Liberals, to win.
- [laughs]
- Bhupati Dutta: Bipin says he'll offer a prayer for them at the Kalighat temple.