Disgraced diplomat yearned for plum posting

Gupta made friends easily and was great with small talk. She could talk about clothes,hair styles or Pakistan’s Urdu press – “where the real news was” – with equal ease.

“English newspapers are boring. They always pick up news a day late. If you want to read real news,real gossip,read Urdu newspapers,” she told this correspondent once.

Gupta learnt Urdu in New Delhi shortly before she was posted to Pakistan in late 2007. She hired a Muslim woman as a private tutor to teach her.

“She taught me from scratch. I didn’t even know my ‘alif-bays’,” said Gupta,who had earlier learnt another foreign language at Jawaharlal Nehru University’s school of languages.

Gupta spoke perfect Urdu and could have easily passed off as a Pakistani because of her accent. Like locals,she was always well dressed,make-up in place,her hair coloured and looked younger than her age.

“I bought this in Lajpat Nagar on my last trip to India,” she said when friends recently praised her stylish new coat.

Gupta sometimes came across as brash and fearless,especially when she regaled friends with tales of driving to India via the Islamabad-Lahore motorway,often at breakneck speed. “I did the Lahore motorway in three-and-a-half hours,” she would tell friends,most of whom admired her guts for driving to and fro alone.