“...She was a jolly good shot, was the memsahib,” Colonel Raghuvir ‘call-me-Rags’ Singh had said over afternoon chai. “Never met anyone who was a better companion in a treetop machaan…you’d have long ago dozed off when a jab in the ribs would alert you to the arrival of Mr. Stripes.” Back in the hunting days of the fifties it was not unusual for a shikari (hunter) to spend weeks in the bush without getting a shot at a tiger. Entire platoons, armed courtesy of Messrs Martini Henry and Lee-Enfield, had scoured the country – helping to reduce the population from 40,000 at the turn of the century to 1,800 within 70 years. Mr. Stripes had to learn to maintain an extremely low profile if he was to survive at all.

Delhi is not a city that should be tackled in a rush; the city’s streets are among the world’s most congested and the real soul of Old Delhi only betrays itself to those who take time to entangle themselves in its web. It has been said that if you stand long enough on one of the busy corners in the exotic labyrinth of Chandni Chowk bazaar the entire world will eventually pass before your eyes.

To my guide the soft dust read like a newspaper report of the night’s drama. Pugmarks, the size of soup plates, were punctuated by mysterious hieroglyphics that told him of the recent demise of a chital fawn. From the pugs Minas identified the murderess and established that she was heading towards the centre of her territory on the southern bank of Lake Padam Talao. The dusty newsprint also forecast that she would need to kill again fairly soon since this would be an insubstantial meal for ‘Lady of the Lake’ and her two cubs.