She seemed a little flustered when she came in.

“They said you were in the library but you are in the catalogue room,” she said.

“The lady sent me up.”

She said, “Please be seated.”

There was something amused and appealing about her, in contrast to the previous librarian. Like her, she was middle-aged and wore a cotton sari, with a bindi and glasses.

“Hodgson?” she asked. “Here’s your book,” and she handed me a thick, insect-ravaged volume. The spine was falling off. I untied the tape that held it closed and the fan blew the top page away.

“Actually I wanted to see his statue.”

Instantly, and therefore surprisingly in such a place, she produced another book, which showed the busts owned by the Society. There he was. She said she’d take me to it, but I wanted to poke around the library and talk to her, so I asked to see the manuscripts in the hall.

“These,” she said, completing her description of the first case, “have been declared a national treasure.”

“What’s your field?”

“Buddhism and the history of Buddhism,” she said.

The case before us contained Buddhist manuscripts, in Sanskrit and Newari. “Perhaps these were collected by Hodgson?”

“Perhaps,” she said, then reasoned it out briefly and concluded that they probably weren’t.

“Do you read Newari?”

“Yes,” she said.

“It’s an unusual and difficult language,” I observed, and to my delight she gave the amused little smile at the corner of her mouth again, and laughed as if I’d invited her for tea.

She showed me various things. An Ashokan inscription, a Persian text, an etching of the Asiatic Society’s original building (“I’ll take you there,” she said) and a letter from Gandhi.

I read Gandhi’s letter aloud, as best I could, and tried to find things to ask her that would make her smile and laugh in the same way again. Instead she led me into an office, and conducted a lengthy debate with a colleague in Bengali. At last she led me to the old building, where Hodgson’s bust was stored.

In desperation I asked her again about her studies and she misunderstood me, feeling the need to explain that she had a Ph.D. But now we were standing before Hodgson. How young he looked. I wondered when it was made. She’d said she’d written the book she’d shown me, but now she had forgotten. I said I probably wasn’t allowed to take a photograph. She said it was forbidden.

As we were re-crossing the gantry which connects the old building to the new one I realized it was my last chance to look at it.

“So that’s the old building. Do you mind if I have another look?”

“Of course,” she said. “May I go?”

“Of course. And thank you very much indeed.”

So she carried on and I turned back, to take a photograph on my mobile phone of Brian Hodgson’s statue.

Photo: Thomas Bell