Lakshmi was born and raised in a family of performers in the now-razed Kathputli Colony in west Delhi’s Shadipur. She was 19 when her family moved from the ‘magicians’ ghetto’, as Salman Rushdie described the settlement in Midnight’s Children, into porta cabins set up on a hillock named Anand Parbat about 3 km away. The arrangement was supposed to be temporary.

Lakshmi was born and raised in a family of performers in the now-razed Kathputli Colony in west Delhi’s Shadipur. She was 19 when her family moved from the ‘magicians’ ghetto’, as Salman Rushdie described the settlement in Midnight’s Children, into porta cabins set up on a hillock named Anand Parbat about 3 km away. The arrangement was supposed to be temporary.