The Kumars at Number 10

The mark of a lady is that she always remains a lady, especially in the life of Sushantha Kumar Bhattacharyya, celebrity professor of manufacturing at Warwick University, who has just been elevated to the House of Lords by Tony Blair.

Was he happy to be ennobled?

“Of course, I’m delighted,” he laughed. “It was completely unexpected,” he lied cheerfully.

Was his wife, Bridget, who is originally from Ireland — they met when Bhattacharyya came from IIT Kharagpur to study engineering in Birmingham — looking forward to becoming Lady Bhattacharyya?

“She’s already a ‘lady’,” remarked Bhattacharyya.

This was not in the sense she was a woman of good upbringing but she could call herself Lady Bhattacharyya when her husband became Sir Kumar Bhattacharyya.

“I was knighted last year,” the new Lord B pointed out. “After the knighthood, I have got the peerage so quickly.”

Lord B will have to call himself “Lord B of something”. Under House of Lords rules, it can’t be foreign such as “Lord B of Bangalore”, where he was born (“I speak better Tamil and Telugu than Hindi”), or “Lord B of Bengal” (“after all, I am Bengali”). So, it will be linked to Birmingham, which has been his home since he first arrived in 1961 as a 21-year-old.

Twelve years ago, he bought the massive house where he first stayed in a bedsit as a young student in what had then seemed dull, gloomy Birmingham. Today, from his window he can gaze at his three-acre garden which he lovingly nurtures.

“It’s nice to see the seasons change and the colours change, even in the middle of winter,” he said, with feeling. “We have a huge cedar at the back of the garden.”

He and his wife have three daughters — “Anita is doing anthropology at University College, London, Tina is doing A levels, and Malini is doing GCSEs.” Lord B already has a flat in London and knows he will enjoy the House of Lords, which is full of Indians (Navnit Dholakia, Swraj Paul, Raj Bagri, Shreela Flather, Bhikhu Parekh, Adam Patel, Meghnad Desai, etc, etc) — a process accelerated by Blair.

Bhattacharyya is a kind of management guru to Blair, as he was to Margaret Thatcher, whom he also admires for tackling the unions and modernising the British economy in the 1980s. “She changed Britain,” he confided. “Without her, Britain would have been dead by now.”

He also seems well connected to India (especially Calcutta), which he visits often. He refers to Vajpayee (“I joke with him”), and “my good friends”, Jaswant (Singh), Advani, Abdul (Kalam), Ratan (Tata), Rahul (Bajaj) (“both his sons trained here at Warwick”). He is very upbeat about India — “give it another five years”.

Ring of truth

In order to prove he really, really loved her, our hero, David Beckham, bought his wife, Victoria, a “giant pink diamond ring”, with matching earrings, for $3 million from Asprey’s for her 30th birthday.

A “source close to the England captain” told a newspaper: “Pink diamonds are the most expensive, so the ring cost him a fortune. But he says Victoria’s worth every penny.”

We have not heard too much lately from either Rebecca Loos or Sarah Marbeck, the two women to whom Beckham is alleged to have made passes. But I have heard from my diamond dealer informant from Antwerp, Rashmi Mehta, who periodically comes to London.

Pink diamonds are not necessarily the best, according to Rashmi.

“Best is red or green,” he explains. “Then comes blue, then pink, followed by white, then yellow or brown.”

Rashmi, who believes in the stick and carat approach to life, tells me that the cost of a pink diamond depends on quality. “I once sold a 50-carat pink diamond to a private buyer,” he comments. “At $300,000 per carat, the diamond cost him $15 million.”

Which all goes to prove that diamonds are a dealer’s best friend.

Just cause

Jeroo Roy, illustrator of children’s books turned full-time artist, has done a series of 20 bold paintings, full of fiery red and symbolic eyes and hands, to reflect her horror of bride burning and dowry deaths in India.

During a visit to Calcutta in January this year, she was briefed by women’s groups and by her nephew, Gautam Ghose. Jeroo is Parsee herself (nee Vajifdar), but she was once married to a Bengali, Pabitra Roy.

She intends to donate a percentage from the sales of her works to one of the groups, NARSS (Nari Adhikar Raksha Sammannaya Samity).

The author Mala Sen was touched when Jeroo told her she was inspired by her book, Death by Fire.

Jeroo has sold only two of her paintings but is willing to allow women’s groups in Britain to borrow her works for display free of charge. She is modest about her art. “My idea is to create awareness of what’s going on with women in India,” she says simply.

Although frail in stature, Jeroo was once a building contractor who managed to move heavy objects, such as doors, all by herself. She now seems determined to move heavier obstacles.

What’s cooking?

London has only two Indian restaurants which have much-sought-after Michelin stars — Tamarind in Mayfair and Zaika in High Street Kensington.

When head chef Atul Kochhar quit Tamarind to set up his own restaurant, Benares, in Berkeley Square, his deputy, Alfred Prasad, managed to cling on to the prized Michelin star.

Now, Vineet Bhatia, head chef at Zaika since it started in 1999, has walked out after money differences with the main owner, Claudio Pulze. He is opening his own 45-seat Rasoi in nearby Sloane Square at the end of this month. He has poured £400,000 into the venture after remortgaging his house.

“I will have nobody to report to,” says a defiant Vineet, whom I would include among the top 10 Indian chefs in Britain.

At Zaika, Vineet introduced a new kind of Indian cuisine which went down well with English middle and upper class clients. With him gone, will Zaika be able to hold on to its Michelin star?

“A Michelin star is given for food, not for decor,” Vineet points out.

Pulze was not available to talk to me but his PR lady, Monica Brown, argued that if Tamarind could keep its star, then why not Zaika?

We will have to wait and see.

One of Vineet’s deputies at Zaika, Rajbir Ujjainwal, will take over as head chef. Another, Sanjay Dwivedi, is going to cook for the actor, Sir Michael Caine, who is teaming up with Pulze to open his own Indian restaurant, Diya, in Portman Square.

The restaurant might work, but only on one condition — Sir Michael and his Indian-origin wife, Shakira, a former Miss Guyana, have to be on hand in the evening to greet the guests personally.

Another piece of news is that Andy Varma, owner of Vama restaurant in the King’s Road, Chelsea, has done a deal with Sir Richard Branson to supply Indian food in Upper Class on Virgin flights between London and Delhi.

Tittle tattle

Cambridge will have up to three new colleges but what should they be called?

Some of the established ones have either Christian (Trinity, St John’s, Magdalene, Christ’s, Peterhouse, Emmanuel) or royal (King’s) connections. But new colleges founded in the next 10 years would probably have to reflect either its benefactor’s name — something like (Bill) Gates College — or multicultural Britain.

Hinduja College might need some getting used to but my guess is that Srichand Hinduja might consider extending his funding for the Dharam Institute of Indic Research in the faculty of Divinity at Cambridge. This is something close to his heart.