She will interrupt, say what's on her mind without editing or censoring a thought, and hold onto an opinion, however unfashionable, with the same tenacity - and 'controversialness' - as her husband is known for.
Lady Nadira Naipaul in conversation with Sangitaa Advani

Forget the old cliché "Behind every successful man, there's a woman." When you meet Lady Nadira Naipaul, wife of Nobel Laureate author, Sir Vidia Naipaul, she's always right up there, in front. In Mumbai, at the recent world launch of Naipaul's latest novel, Magic Seeds, she's seated by his side on the podium, virtually the mistress of ceremonies. She's there to tidy the rough edges around the Great Man, smoothing over his famous ire at "stupid" questions, fending off the paparazzi. She adds the warmth, the human setting to the clipped, diamond brilliance of Naipaul's cutting intellect - and tongue.

But don't let that give you the impression that Lady N is a public relations' type person, always saying the "correct" thing. Far from it. As a fellow-Pakistani writer once put it, Nadira Naipaul is more Naipaul than Naipaul.

It's intriguing ambivalences like these that make the Naipauls such an interesting couple. One thing that's steadfastly unambivalent is their devotion to each other. Younger than him by twenty odd years, they have been married since 1996, and most of it has been pretty dramatic. How did the two meet? Lady Naipaul was a well-regarded columnist and special correspondent for the Pakistani newspaper, The Nation, for ten years. With great flair, she tells you how she met Naipaul when he had come to Pakistan to research his book, Among the Believers.

She reminisces, "It's a very famous story which has been distorted so many times that I'm actually fed up of it. Well, I had gone to the American Consulate. There was a Pakistani journalist, called Ahmed Rashid and I am taking his name, because I wish to clear this. He walked up to me and said, 'Do you know V S Naipaul?'

"And he pointed and I saw this man, very ravaged, tired, bent over a plate of salad. (He doesn't eat meat. You know Pakistanis eat a lot of meat.) And he was picking his salad. "And when I walked up to him and I looked at him, he was tired, I was tired. I had been fighting battles too, of my own, and I saw him and I was just filled with a kind of reverence. We were tired, the two of us. Tired people. And, I looked at him, and I was just full of love, and pity, and love, and for myself probably, because I was suffering too. And I said to him, 'Can I kiss you?' I didn't even wait. I kissed him on his cheek. He looked at me and he said, 'I think you should sit down….!'"