Delicious aside in Ellen Barry's story on the "jungle prince":

"My responsibilities in New Delhi included a great many diplomatic receptions and buffet dinners, which I found exhausting. It was like being drawn into an imperial court, in which every personal relationship was a series of transactions — exchanges, usually, of bits of status for bits of information. I did not have the clothes for this kind of work, or the personality."

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/22/world/asia/the-jungle-prince-of-delhi.html