Lady Hoity-Toity emerges out of her ermine cocoon. I get a full view. Fifty-fivish, small (a little over five feet), bosomless, bottomless, scraggy, sexless. Muddy blonde hair, muddy blonde down all over her leathery pink skin. Cuts on the sides of the jaw indicate a surgical face-lift. She is, as the Bard put it, ‘beated and chopp’d with tann’d antiquity’. Dress: grey cardigan, powder-blue denims, khaki canvas boots. Nothing feminine about her except her little size, blue eyes and a bracelet strung with gold coins.

The Presidential hamper is opened on a Presidential collapsible table. Egg sandwiches, steaming hot coffee.

‘You speak uncommonly good English,’ says she, offering me a cigarette. ‘Bet you were schooled in England.’

I shake my head at the cigarette. ‘Haileybury.’ Haileybury sounds safe and very Blighty.

‘Old East India school!’ she says very patronizingly.

‘And surely that’s a King’s tie!’

‘It is.’ I hold up the tie I have no right to wear.

‘My husband is also a King’s man. When were you up?’

‘Seven years ago.’ Her husband must be at least thirty years older than I. No danger of being caught out.

‘What did you read?’

‘History.’

She beams. ‘So did my husband! Who was your tutor?’

I will get into trouble if I let her go on questioning me. ‘I spent more time on the sports ground than in tutorials.’

She smiles. She makes up to me. ‘I am awfully sorry. I took you to be a professional guide. They should have told me. Do forgive my discourtesy.’

‘Don’t give it a thought! Your Ladyship has Delhi’s worst unpaid guide at her service.’

‘You are a joker! We’ll get on. My name is Jane. What’s yours?’ She extends her hand. Bony, strong, cold. ‘Singh. A very distinguished name shared by fifty million Sikhs, Rajputs, Banias, Thakurs, Gurkhas, Biharis and many others.’ She chortles happily. We are old friends. I tell her I was on the same plane. I flatter her. ‘Those camera bulbs flashing! I thought you were a film star. You could be one.’

‘Liar! I like compliments not flattery.’ She wheezes a mixture of cough and laughter.

We sip coffee, munch egg sandwiches and engender rapport.

‘What do you know about Tilpat?’ she asks.

‘Not much. Legend has it that it was one of the Pandava’s five villages. You know about the Pandavas?’

She nods. ‘Tell me again.’

‘The Pandavas demanded of their kinsmen, the Kurus, their share of the inheritance consisting of five villages: Panipat, Sonipat, Indrapat, Baghpat and Tilpat. When the Kurus refused, they went to war. The battle was fought at Kurukshetra, seventy miles north-west of here. The Pandavas, helped by Krishna, won. You know the Gita?’

She nods again. ‘Part of the Mahabharata, isn’t it? Krishna’s sermon on the righteous war . . . . Wasn’t there a woman with many husbands somewhere in the story?’