LOST WORLD: Cover of the book, Climbing the Mango Trees by Madhur Jaffrey

A trip down memory lane

Madhur Jaffrey, the 72-year-old cookery writer and actress, hit big time in 1995 with her BBC television series on Indian cuisine, Flavours of India. Today, the New York-based Madhur is recognised as the queen of curry. But in her just published memoirs of her idyllic childhood days in pre-partition Delhi, Climbing the Mango Trees (Ebury Press; ?18.99) she admits: “When I left India to study in England, I could not cook at all.”

Her book reads in part like a schoolgirl’s diary but is most moving when she recalls how Partition destroyed the old Delhi and even the friendships in Madhur Bahadur’s classroom.

The reader is left with the impression that she does not entirely approve of the overnight transformation of Delhi, where previously one million Hindus and Muslims had maintained a refined cultural balance, into a 13-million-strong Punjabi dominated city.

“Delhi’s Muslims began disappearing, making their way to Pakistan,” she writes. “All my Muslim classmates left without farewells. I can only assume they had safe journeys. I have not seen even one of them since.”

How sad.

She also adds: “Delhi, as we knew it, ceased to exist. Its vibrant Hindu-Muslim culture, its nuanced rules of etiquette, its unfailing politeness and its unique sense of hospitality began to fade away.”

Her upper middle-class family had been all the richer for having absorbed many Muslim customs, notably in matters of elegant dress and fine food. As Madhur says, her family was “Hindu by origin but heavily veneered with Muslim culture and English education”.

By the end of the book, when she is about to leave for England to study at RADA, she tells us that “I was busy falling in love” ? but not that she had fallen for a Muslim boy.

We have to turn to Saeed Jaffrey’s 1998 autobiography, An Actor’s Journey, to read of her father’s response when Jaffrey asked for his daughter’s hand in marriage: “Yes, you have rather taken the whole affair into your hands. As a Muslim, when you come back (from England) you may find getting a job rather difficult. I will help you in the best way I can, I assure you. But as far as allowing you to marry Madhur is concerned, I’m sorry the answer is a firm No!”

Madhur should certainly bring her fascinating life up to date in the second part of her autobiography but she should be a lot more candid.

FRozen in time: (Above) Tim Smith’s picture of a Bollywood shoot in the Lake District; The Shah Jehan Mosque (below) in Woking was built in 1889

Picture perfect

On a trip to Bradford some years ago, I worked with a photographer called Tim Smith. What I did not know at the time was that Tim was developing a sideline, taking pictures of Asians in Britain. Now nearly 100 of those black and white images, depicting all aspects of life over the past quarter of a century, including many from the Muslim community, are on show at the National Theatre in London in an exhibition, ‘Asians in Britain’. One of my favourites is of the first purpose-built mosque in Woking in Surrey. The Shah Jehan Mosque, built in 1889 and mostly financed by Begum Shah Jehan from the Bhopal ruling family, proves that Britain’s link with Muslims go back a long time.

On another occasion, Tim took pictures of a Bollywood shoot in the picturesque Lake District in Cumbria. One of the actors with a quiff gave his name as Hrithik Roshan, while two pretty girls said they were called Rani Mukherjee and Kareena Kapoor.

Tim sounds almost Hindu about his plans to spend more time taking pictures in India. “I could spend several lifetimes there,” he sighs.

Praiseworthy

Journalists seeking more information on talks in India between Dr John Reid, the visiting secretary of state for defence from London, and his opposite number Pranab Mukherjee, were referred to a press officer called Sagar Sharma.

Was he newly appointed to the Indian High Commission in London, I wondered, for the name was not known to me.

Then I looked more closely and realised that the said Mr Sharma is press officer for the British ministry of defence.

Would Pranabbabu ever appoint someone called, say Tristram Chomondley-Carruthers, to represent India’s defence PR?

Credit to the Brits where it is due.

His story

The Indian government will, I hope, remember to send a big bouquet of fragrant marigolds to the memorial service in London on November 15 of the 7th Lord Brabourne, who died at his home in Kent last month aged 80. As John Brabourne, he produced a number of films, including David Lean’s A Passage to India.

Brabourne Stadium in Mumbai was named after his family as was Brabourne College in Calcutta. I once complained to Lord Brabourne of the very strict security checks I endured at Brabourne College when I used to go there during holidays to collect my cousins, who were over-protected students at the college.

Lord Brabourne, who was married to Lord Mountbatten’s daughter, was born in Bombay on November 9, 1924. His father, the 5th Baron Brabourne, spent four months as India’s youngest Viceroy in 1938. The latter is buried in Calcutta.

A few years ago when Lady Shreela Flather took several descendants of Viceroys on a trip to India, Lord Brabourne broke away briefly to visit his father’s grave at the St John’s Church (which I myself happened to visit in April this year to see the Job Charnock memorial but missed Lord Brabourne’s grave). It is a remarkably evocative place but needs a bit of tlc (tender loving care).

Food fave

Westminster Council in London has erected a plaque at 102, George Street, Portman Square (just behind Selfridges) in memory of Sake Dean Mahomed, who established the first Indian restaurant in the UK, the Hindoostane Coffee House, on the site in 1810.

Mahomed, who served in the East India Company army before coming to the UK in 1784, was born in ? yes, you’ve got it ? Patna in 1759. He died in Brighton in 1851.

What about a plaque in Patna?

Tittle tattle

The man given the important job of ensuring Britain secures a record medal haul at the 2012 Olympics in London is Lord Moynihan, a former Tory politician and a rowing silver medallist from the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. He has been appointed chairman of the British Olympics Association.

Once described as “small but perfectly formed”, Colin Moynihan was sports minister under Margaret Thatcher in 1988 when an “exotic” Indian woman disrupted his life.

It was as his escort to the Tory Winter Ball that the desi lady in question first caught the eye of the inquisitive photographers. She turned out to be an escort, all right, used to charging ?500 a night. It emerged that the woman had started life as Pamela Singh, won the Miss India contest organised by Vimla Patil of Femina, married a Frenchman, Henri Bordes, added an extra “” to her name and reinvented herself as Pamella Bordes. She was working in the House of Commons as a “researcher” when she was rumbled.

There was no suggestion that Moynihan himself had been indiscreet in any way. But, then, we all have regrets.