ART OF THE MATTER: Jatin Das (top) and Suman Roy; Christ by Roy (above)

A not so flattering picture

Jatin Das, 64-year-old veteran artist, was seated alongside Suman Roy, having a pub lunch of fish and chips.

They had been part of a group of 17 Indian painters who had been at a British Council and Air India sponsored art camp in the Kent village of Littlebourne. As a response to being in the English countryside, Das had painted a female form with a couple of ducks thrown in, while Roy, after visiting Canterbury Cathedral, had done Christ.

“Fish and chips in India is better,” declared Das.

The father of the actress Nandita Das likes to speak his mind, especially if his opinions are controversial.

When we met for lunch again, he expressed regret that in technology-driven India, fewer and fewer people had time to draw, either at school or even at art institutions. “There are not even proper shops where you can get art materials. Here (in London), I am like a child in a toy shop.”

He was also scornful of the money-fuelled “art boom” in India.

And he was withering about art students, barely out of college, who hold exhibitions of their work, publish catalogues, fetch high prices, “hold a glass of wine and a cigarette and walk like this” — he affected an arrogant strut.

“Even Santiniketan has become decadent,” he concluded. “I visited the place and no one seemed to be drawing.”

On song

As with Vande Mataram in India, an equally passionate debate is being conducted about whether Jerusalem should be made the national song of England. It is traditionally sung at Labour Party gatherings and by members of the Women’s Institute. But it was also sung by crowds last year during the Ashes series to whip patriotic fervour into the England team.

The words, which I must admit I love, are from a poem by William Blake (1757-1827) and the melody, by Charles Hubert Hastings Parry (1848-1918), is from 1916 during the time of the Great War.

The poem, which I quote in full, tells of the myth that Jesus Christ came to England as a small boy:

And did those feet in ancient time/Walk upon England’s mountains green?/And was the holy Lamb of God/On England’s pleasant pastures seen?/And did the Countenance Divine/Shine forth upon our clouded hills?/And was Jerusalem builded here/Among these dark satanic mills?/Bring me my bow of burning gold;/Bring me my arrows of desire;/Bring me my spear; clouds, unfold!/Bring me my chariot of fire!/I will not cease from mental fight,/Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,/Till we have built Jerusalem/In England’s green and pleasant land.

There has been an unsuccessful attempt by the far-Right British National Party, which believes in a white England, wants immigration halted and uses the Union flag as its symbol, to hijack the song. There are clergymen who admit the words are stirring but argue Jerusalem should not be sung in church because it does not include a specific prayer to God.

To be sure, racism exists in British but the encouraging aspect of this country is that society does want even angry young Muslims to help build Jerusalem in “England’s green and pleasant land”.

Vande Mataram could have been an Indian equivalent of Jerusalem in an India more at ease with itself. Perhaps the aim should now be to find a rousing song which can be sung before a Test match in India.

China gate

A sign of the times: Mandarin is to become compulsory for new pupils at Brighton College, an East Sussex public school (one of my nephews attended the school before heading out, after university, to Japan where he teaches English, plays in a band and is learning Japanese). Latin, French and Spanish are also taught at the school.

Richard Cairns, the school’s headmaster, says: “One of my key tasks is to make sure that the pupils at Brighton College are equipped for the realities of the 21st century, and one of those realities is that China has the fastest growing economy in the world. A better understanding of the language and culture of China will be hugely to the advantage of the children of Brighton College.”

This enlightened policy contrasts sharply with the backwardness of those who prevented English from being taught to Indian primary schoolchildren.

Moving times

THE ELITE: Preity Zinta

Until it packed up this year, I had been more than happy with my Rs 1,100 Titan Quartz bought seven or eight years ago in Bombay. Though I have also had an Omega or two (my father’s was lost in a snowball fight, the other stolen in a burglary), I am the least qualified to write about luxury watches. But watches are a passion with some people and they are certainly a passion with the Swiss who make them.

This is something that Preity Zinta will have to understand if she is appointed brand ambassador for Chopard. She has worn their watches (eg at Cannes), as has Aishwarya Rai, but is not officially a brand ambassador.

Is Preity a candidate, I asked Caroline Gruosi-Scheufele, who is vice-president and “head of creations” at Chopard, makers of luxury watches and jewellery with designs on the Indian market.

“She is definitely a candidate,” confirms Caroline, who has done reconnaissance trips to India.

“The big Indian actors and actresses do come to Cannes,” she says. “For nine years we have been at the film festival. You get to build a relationship and then you can exploit and may be take that to the market. May be we will have an Indian ambassadress.”

I am briefly in Chopard’s factory in Fleurier, near Lausannes, where there is great excitement because the company has developed a new movement for its “LUC Chrono One” chronograph. This, I am assured by those who understand such inventions, is a landmark in watch making. Three patents are pending.

Watch making developed in the remote Swiss mountains because people were cut off by heavy snow during the winter months, explains Caroline. “So people kept themselves busy by doing something very time consuming — developing movements. It is a tradition that has been taken forward through generations and generations and generations. There is a lot of loyalty, passion and patience.”

Though thousands of intricate Chopard parts are made by sophisticated computers, they are hand finished and checked by men and usually women with microscopes and eyeglasses.

Chopard and Bollywood have one thing in common, asserts Caroline. “There is a big synergy between the two worlds. At the end of the day we are not doing anything but creating dreams.”

Tittle tattle

WILL SHE, WON’T SHE? Prince Charles and Camilla

Ten years after Princess Diana, a fashion icon, visited Pakistan, Camilla is to undertake a week-long tour of the country next month with Prince Charles.

The big problem is not whether Pakistan is one of the most dangerous countries in the world but whether conservative Camilla — like Diana — will wear a salwaar kameez?