New Delhi, Feb. 28 -- Never have I ever been asked to cut a cake iced with the words "Welcome Home" after I've finished an interview. But at Shahnaz Husain's mansion in Delhi, it's a ritual for first-time guests. "Now you can't forget me," Husain says, as an in-house photographer takes pictures.

It is difficult to forget her. She doesn't look like she's aged a day since I first saw her in the lobby of Delhi's Oberoi hotel 20 years ago. With her henna-coloured billowy hair, pea-sized diamond nose pin and peach-red lipstick, she's the original beauty influencer who started a herbal cosmetics revolution in India in the 1970s by putting kitchen remedies in plastic jars and her face and name on the label.

When we meet, she's dressed in an el...