Dom Moraes knew time was running out for him when the doctors declared a couple of years ago that the tumour in his neck was malignant.

But he refused to let that sombre diagnosis extinguish his very wry British humour.

He nicknamed the tumour Gorgi and wrote to someone we know: 'I had the thing in my neck taken out last week and the doctor seems reasonably optimistic that I may live a bit longer than he originally thought.'

Then, he paused, and added, making the operation seem like a kind of high farce, an afternoon's amusement: 'Actually it was rather a consolation to enter the operation theatre thinking I would be fairly widely mourned. It was a melodramatic sort of affair.'

Architect Charles Correa, after paying his respects at the funeral.