HOMEWARD BOUND: Anjana Gosai

Beauty, the Indian way

Anjana Gosai, a 26-year-old model-cum-fashion journalist in London, will be flying to India shortly to gather material and photographs to complete her “beauty guide for Asian women” on which she has been working for two years.

She is organising a photo shoot with local models, including Vidisha Pavate and Dipannita Sharma, perhaps a Bollywood actress or two, and using the services of make-up artist Mickey Contractor.

Anjana, who got married recently to the journalist Amar Singh, will be coming with her very supportive husband, who has also become a frequent visitor to India.

Time was when British-born Indians had to be dragged screaming and kicking to India by parents determined to force-feed their children with “5,000 years of our glorious culture”. But today the second generation can scarcely be kept out, which bodes well for the relationship between Indians here and back in the Mother Country.

Anjana, who was born in Leicester, knows a thing or two about modelling, having strutted the catwalk for Sunit Varma and Satya Paul in London and for NIFT in India. Her idea is to advise Asian women in India, Britain and elsewhere on how they can “enhance” their natural beauty. She expects her book to be published next year under the label, Angus & Grapher, and promoted by Corner Bookstores.

The idea of Indian beauty has gained wider international acceptance since Aishwarya Rai won the Miss World in 1994. There is no business like the beauty business, with diversification into yoga and ayurveda. Now, thanks to someone like Anjana, there can be a more useful exchange on beauty tips between Indian girls in India and Indian girls in England (eg. how often to shampoo hair ? answer, not every day).

Long lustrous hair, lovely olive skin and almond eyes are qualities associated with Indian beauty, says Anjana. But women should not be afraid to use brightly coloured eye shadow, even green or pink for example, she suggests.

I am glad Anjana urges restrained use of henna colouring in hair. “It looks fake,” she says. Especially in men, she ought to add.

FOR ART'S SAKE: Mildred and William Archer (above); The Sen Sisters by Frank Owen Salisbury (below)

Sisters for sale

This kind of commission rarely happens today but in 1928, Sir Rajendra Mookerjee ushered three pretty sisters ? Srilata, Arathi and Anjali Sen ? into the London studio of the great British portrait painter, Frank Owen Salisbury. They were the daughters of Mr and Mrs Rimsod Sen and granddaughters of the social reformer Keshub Chandra Sen.

Salisbury, who had painted five American Presidents and five British Prime Ministers, was utterly charmed and painted what came to be considered one of his best works, The Sen Sisters. “They were so beautiful that I could not resist asking them to sit for me,” wrote Salisbury, who never visited India but did 12 lunette panels for the Victoria Memorial Hall.

The Sen Sisters, which the artist donated to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, is included in Christie’s ‘Arts of India’ auction on September 23, with a reserve price of between ?40,000 and ?60,000.

Also included for what appears to be a major auction are paintings from the personal collection of William Archer, who ended as Keeper Emeritus of the Indian section at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and his wife, Mildred. Their married and professional lives were built around Indian art.

Laugh lines

Channel 4, an independent television channel with a brief to make programmes for minorities, has come up with a new Asian comedy series, Meet the Magoons.

It is billed as “the story of a group of mates (Hardeep Singh Kohli, Sanjeev Kohli, Nitin Ganatra and Paul Sharma) for whom ketchup, chaos, country slices, tandooris, turbans and transvestites are all in a day’s work. The action is set around The Spice, a Punjabi curry house in Glasgow, where the day-to-day running of the business comes second to the cock-ups and cover-ups of the Magoons.”

Perhaps Channel 4’s intention is to help the cause of integration by showing Asian youth are as badly behaved as everyone else ? a friend counted 25 ‘f***’ words in the first half-hour episode ? but Meet the Magoons illustrates how difficult it is to find genuinely witty writers among British Asians. Those who try, confuse vulgarity and uncouth behaviour for comedy. Even Goodness Gracious Me and The Kumars at No. 42 were allowed to linger on long past their sell-by dates.

It could be that British Asian humour is still “in development”, certainly when compared with something as finely written as Yes, Minister, set among civil servants in London’s Whitehall. It’s more than 25 years since the first episode was aired but the characters, Jim Hacker, the hapless minister, and his civil servants, Sir Humphrey Appleby and Bernard Woolley, still come across as very funny.

It is perhaps unfair to compare Meet the Magoons, which reflects British Asian “culture” at its crudest, with the best of British.

Tandoori flights

An airline last week promised “hot food” on its flights, which is not something that can be taken for granted these days considering the problems British Airways has had with Gate Gourmet, its catering supplier at Heathrow.

It has become fashionable for people in the media to knock British Airways but I have been a long-time admirer (though I think its old name, BOAC, carried the magic of being able to fly to faraway places). I have also been grateful for its non-stop flights between London and Calcutta. But the quality of its food on this sector has never been one of the airline’s strengths, even before the troubles with Gate Gourmet.

Since airline food is rarely to anyone’s taste, especially when even the big carriers are being forced to cut costs in the face of rising fuel prices, one solution is to allow passengers the option of carrying their own tiffin.

I know of one Indian tycoon who routinely carried extra helpings of vegetarian food on Concorde which he used frequently. He made useful business contacts with obliging passengers who told the stewardesses: “I don’t want caviar and lobster thermidor ? I want what he is having.”

NIGHT WATCHMAN: Simon Jones

Tittle tattle

The 26-year England pace bowler Simon Jones has attracted quite a bit of attention by posing in the nude for Cosmopolitan magazine ? for a cancer charity.

Jones, who is actually a Welshman, injured himself in the fourth Test at Trent Bridge but the 6ft 4in fast bowler made a devastating impression on the Australian batsmen with his reverse swing.

He also apparently made quite an impression on a 20-year-old blonde model, Terri Reece, who claims in a newspaper “kiss & tell” that she had a one-night fling with Jones. This caused his girlfriend, Kim Spencer, to retire hurt ? permanently.

We should at least be grateful for small mercies that none of the Indian Test team has appeared in Cosmopolitan. As they say in polite English society, we wouldn’t want to frighten either the horses or the servants.