in 1944. In Delhi, Jaffrey attended Queen Mary's Higher Secondary School where her history teacher, Mrs McKelvie, encouraged her to participate in school plays. Jaffrey played the role of Titania in William Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream followed by the lead role in Robin Hood and His Merry Men. Madhur's brothers, Brij Bans Bahadur and Krishen Bans Bahadur, who were much older than her, were enrolled in St. Stephen's College, Delhi. Every winter, St. Stephen's students put on a Shakespearean play that Jaffrey would watch avidly from the front row. A supporter of Mahatma Gandhi's demand for Indian independence from British rule, Jaffrey spent some time each day spinning khadi and delivered several large spools of thread to a central collection center in Delhi. In 1947, Jaffrey experienced first-hand the effects of the partition of India. At school, her classmates split into two on the issue of partition; the Muslim girls supported the idea while the Hindus were against it. On August 15 she watched the transfer of power at India Gate and got a clear glimpse of Jawaharlal Nehru and Lord Mountbatten coming down Rajpath in an open horse carriage. The massive multi-directional migration that began almost immediately afterwards caused riots and killing in Delhi. The male members of her family guarded their house with guns that they had previously used only for hunting game. At school, all her Muslim classmates left without a farewell. In 1948, a few days before Mahatma Gandhi was shot dead, she attended one of his prayer meetings at Birla House and sang bhajans. She heard the news of his assassination on the radio, followed by Jawaharlal Nehru's address later that night, "the light has gone out of our lives, and there is darkness everywhere." She saw Gandhi's funeral procession at Rajpath and witnessed his cremation at Rajghat. At home, Jaffrey's family primarily ate food prepared by servants but supervised by the women of the family. They occasionally indulged in Mughlai cuisine bought in the bylanes of Old Delhi, like bedmi aloo, seekh kebab, shami kebab, rumali roti and bakarkhani. Refugees from Punjab who settled in Delhi after partition brought their own style of cooking. Moti Mahal, a dhaba in Daryaganj, introduced tandoori chicken and then went on to invent butter chicken and dal makhani. Jaffrey found Punjabi food's simplicity and freshness very enticing and routinely picked up tandoori food from Moti Mahal