According to novelist Pico Iyer, India is the “most chattery nation on earth”. Well, I wouldn’t like to try and judge that, but the wonderful, inventive, vibrant, use of Indian English is always a delight.

In Kolkata, for example, we saw the Victoria Memorial, which according to the taxi driver is the ‘Taj Mahal’ of the city. “Taj is Raj”, he said, neatly summarising the relationships between architecture and colonial power…

Kolkata is well known for its intellectual and literary culture. We wandered, and browsed, on College Street: “College is knowledge”, our driver sagely told us.

We’d come across this glorious Indian habit of playing with rhymes before.   “I’m going shopping-whopping”, for example, or “oh, not another meeting-sheeting”.  Perhaps it’s even catching: one of the TFs, faced with a group all chattering away at once, added his own, magnificent invention: ‘Will you please just stop talking -squawking!’