text: I met Wroe last year during a brief stint as a Chevening fellow at The Economist at its former address on St James’ Street. My window opened to a postcard view from London Eye to the Shard. And my desk on the 13th floor was strategically located by a cupboard overflowing with stationery and sweet and salty snacks from Sainsbury’s, which naturally gave me a chance to interact with nearly everyone on the floor. When they discussed India, they would usually argue about Narendra Modi, nationalism and economic reforms. As Wroe passed by, black velvet waistcoat buttoned up and vintage brooch on beret, I overheard her mention someone unusual. It was a bookseller from Khan Market, Delhi.
  For almost three weeks last March, Wroe gathered research material on Balraj Bahri Malhotra, founder of the landmark Bahrisons bookshop in Khan Market, who had recently passed away. Bahri was ‘just the sort of candidate she liked’. We got talking, moving our discussion to the black couches in the lobby. She was planning to pack her research material on Bahri to browse on holiday in Spain. At airports, she usually reads the Bhagavad Gita and Upanishads. Bahri didn’t get on the page. There were ‘simply too many famous people dying of late,’ like former First Lady Nancy Reagan and she felt ‘a slight obligation not to ignore them’.
  Who reads obituaries? In India, the lost art is occasionally restored mainly for politicians and celebrities; hurriedly penned by other politicians, celebrities and celebrity editors. In the UK, lengthy obituaries survive in sections of the print media though death is considered so commercially taboo that advertisers recoil from selling products next to obituaries. The Times and Daily Telegraph are known to stockpile hundreds of obituaries of living world leaders, celebrities and people we don’t know but might like to read about. I heard that certain readers are addicted to The Economist’s last page and read the anonymously penned obituary first.
  Wroe’s stockpile is selective. She has a secret bank of 15 obituaries (including former US presidents and a dictator). Every week, she searches for interesting life stories of two-three candidates until she ‘hears a bell in her head’.
  “I’m very keen to find excuses to cover candidates from India … they are indeed rare at the moment, perhaps one in six months,’’ she told me that rainy afternoon. Her Asian profiles tend to veer towards a collection of India exotica for British readers but she insists that candidates need not be exotic. She has profiled actor Shammi Kapoor who ‘seethed with Westernised sex appeal,’ Brajraj Mahapatra, the last prince of the British Raj turned pauper who ‘also killed one elephant’ and Sashimani Devi, the last human consort of god Jagannath in Puri. “As husbands went,” Wroe wrote, “he was not demanding”.