Dehradun, June 9 -- Vivek Sirkar.

The shrill sound of a sword being sharpened against a grindstone rends the air. The din of their love song makes conversation impossible.

'Did you know there's a cicada named after you!' says Vivek Sircar, research scholar at the World Wildlife Institute, Dehradun. Deflating me, in the next breath, he adds, 'Mackinnon, the schoolmaster-turned-brewer, must have had a servant named Ganesh, whom he probably sent out to gather cicadas.'

'I saw that specimen in the British Museum!' he said almost in a matter-of-fact way.

I have with me a copy of In Search of the Picaresque by Fanny Parkes, who was the wife of a junior English civil servant. She travelled across India in the wake of the Viceroy's tour. In M...