Laisong (Dima Hasao): She was an English society beauty with "cinema actress looks" who came to this remote southern Assam village and turned World War II heroine, forming a guerrilla unit with local Zeme Nagas and Kukis to resist the advancing Japanese.

On Saturday night, Laisong was transported back in time to be reintroduced to the life of Ursula Graham Bower, and a piece of its own history, whose legend it had heard from village elders.

A British troupe staged a one-woman play, Ursula: Queen of the Jungle, in a makeshift tent near the Presbyterian Church of India in this village, 75km from district headquarters Haflong, with power supplied by a generator.

A full house watched transfixed on a cold winter night, with a local youth translating the English dialogues in the Zeme Naga language from a corner of the stage, stretching the two-hour play to a full three hours.

Ursula (1914-88) would have approved: a local aide used to act as an interpreter between her and the villagers although she could speak a few key Zeme Naga words.

The Roedean-educated Ursula had first arrived in India in 1937 as a debutante, her mother hoping she would find a husband. But she grew interested in Naga culture and arrived in Laisong in 1939 as an amateur anthropologist, opened dispensaries, and stayed on till 1946.