Meenal

That is the only claim worth making first, because it is the one a reader can check by scrolling. One is a mirror at home, one is a bar, one is a staircase in a hotel, one is a table with a book on it. Four angles on a single hour would have been easier to collect and would have told you nothing.

She is twenty-seven and grew up in Udaipur, which is five hours south and a quieter city than this one. She moved up for work, kept the flat in Bani Park, and has been here long enough to stop treating the station end of it as far away. Hindi and English, five foot five.

Bani Park is the havelis-turned-hotels side of the walled city, so most of what she does is a short drive at her end. She goes down to Ajmer when it is set a day in advance - a hundred and thirty-one kilometres each way makes that a night rather than an evening, and she prices it as one.