This parasitical world consists of “princes, scions of high officials, the occasional business tycoon from Bombay”, who had studied in “the best private schools in India and many who had gone to Oxford or Cambridge”. Members of this set come into their own when they have their tribal gatherings in “the drawing rooms” of Lutyens’ Delhi. Tavleen notes, with a hint of amusement, that “almost nobody in these drawing rooms had a serious job or a serious interest in getting one”. Yet, it is to these rooms that Tavleen is invited or returns again and again. In these drawing rooms, she says, “during the Emergency my social life seemed to become an endless series of dinner parties”, even though she agonises aloud “how deracinated our little set was”. Unwittingly, Tavleen ends up providing an insider’s pen-portrait of the old order and its decadent, frivolous core.