the east and the west in dialogue

I was particularly interested in Flory's conversation with the Dr Veraswami in Chapter 3. Orwell sets it up as an easy relationship in which both the characters respect the other as equals. It is similar to the relationship between Aziz and Fielding. The Doctor pines for "cultured conversation". The veranda then becomes a stage on which this exchange can happen.

The veranda was wide and dark, with low eaves from which baskets of fern hung, making it seem like a cave behind a waterfall of sunlight.

The veranda is positioned as a place where Flory escapes from the heat and realities of the other Whites. The shape is also similar to a proscenium stage. There are references to Ibsen, Bernard Shaw and even a parody of a soliloquy from Shakespeare's Hamlet in his "how noble a type iss the English gentleman!" speech. There is gesture (nipping the thumb and forefinger together), action happening "offstage" (Muttu's begging) and declamatory statements "Behold there the degeneracy of the East".

However, there is a certain perfunctoriness in the dialogue - as if both actors already familiar with the script.

The joke that the "British Empire was an aged female patient of the doctor's" had gone on for two years, the doctor "grew agitated, as he always did" when Flory criticised the Club members, they have a "favourite argument" which takes place "as often as the two men met". Even the form of the argument is repetitive since he always interrupts the argument at the same point which "as a rule it followed the same course, almost word for word"

Dialogue is not "alive" but repetitive and to no fruitful end. Equality is a myth as Flory claims in the next chapter that the doctor does not understand what he says. The roles that Flory and the doctor take up seem to be mere stereotypes which continually perform the roles of the colonised and the colonialist who has "gone native".