COME TOGETHER: John Milton (top); Yusuf Hamied

Paradise lost and regained

The poet John Milton and Origin of Species author Charles Darwin, whose portraits hang in the Hall of Christ’s College, Cambridge, couldn’t make it last week to a gathering of famous old boys of the 500-year-old institution. But Cipla chairman Yusuf Hamied more than made up for their absence when he hosted a dinner to mark the 100th birthday of Dr Lucan Pratt, the Senior Tutor who had admitted him in 1954.

Yusuf was given a place by Pratt on the recommendation of the famous scientist (and later Nobel Prize winning) Professor Alex Todd, who had visited India and met the boy. Yusuf got in on the strength of his Senior Cambridge taken in Bombay.

After a First, Yusuf stayed on and finished his PhD before returning to India to work for Cipla, the company his father has established. In recent years, Yusuf has become a legend because he has sold HIV drugs cheaply in Africa, much to the fury of the American pharmaceutical giants.

Sitting at High Table, Yusuf presided over dinner. “I would not be standing here before you and I know many here would not be here but for Dr Pratt and his admission policy,” he said. “None of us could have asked God for a greater boon than to have studied in Christ’s during the Pratt era — 1946 to 1970.”

One of Yusuf’s friends at Christ’s was Swaranjit Singh, who got a Blue for Cambridge. Swaranjit, a shy man, was introduced by Yusuf to a German girl, Irmen, whom the Sikh subsequently married.

On their wedding day in Cambridge on September 23, 1956, “I was one of the witnesses,” Yusuf told me. “The second witness from St John’s was another Indian — Manmohan Singh.”

As reward for his good deed, the Indian Prime Minister will receive an honorary degree from Cambridge on October 11.

BIRTHDAY BOY: M.F. Husain

Nearly there

Bombay may have missed him but M.F. Husain, who has virtually taken up residence in London, did not miss Bombay. Surrounded by friends such as Dr Yusuf Hamied, M F celebrated his 91st birthday by blowing out the candles on a cake.

Just another nine years and he will get the traditional centenary greetings telegram from the Queen, just as Nirad C. Chaudhuri did.

Vienna waltz

Perfect script: Claus Tieber with his sons, Bruno and Theodor

We all know Bollywood is big in Britain but now I hear of a book on the Hindi film industry in German.

“Passages to Bollywood is not the first book on the subject in German, but one of the very first, the fourth or fifth, I suppose,” says the author, Claus Tieber, an Austrian, modestly.

Claus, 40, who used to be a television commissioning editor, now teaches Hindi cinema to 200 students at the Institute of Theatre, Film and Media Studies at the University of Vienna. He got hooked after watching Asian MTV on holiday in Egypt.

His students “started to realise the range of this cinema” when he showed them Mother India and Dewaar. He decided to turn his class notes into a book. “This way I can show more people than the 200 in my course that Bollywood is more than the cliché. I am planning to write other books about it.”

The foreword is by Yash Chopra and the cover picture is from DDLJ. It helps that Claus’s brother-in-law in London is Arjun Varma, who runs Vama, the Indian restaurant on the King’s Road, with his elder brother, Andy. They did the catering when K3G was shot in the UK.

Art of the matter: Rohit Khattar

Thought for food

Some big name contemporary artists — Anjolie Ela Menon, Jogen Chowdhury, Paresh Maity and Yusuf Arakkal among them — could be found dining last week at Chor Bizarre, Rohit Khattar’s Indian restaurant in Albermarle Street, Mayfair.

Their works were on display in the restaurant’s basement which Rohit has turned into an art gallery called Sitaaray.

“It means stars,” explained Rohit, who runs the Habitat Centre in Delhi.

The word has got around that contemporary Indian artists who want to make money must head for London.

But there’s one thing I will say for Rohit: he sells curries in order to feed his art habit.

Tittle tattle

Picture editors of national newspapers have pencilled in an important event that they have all decided to cover tomorrow. But then never before has Durga been immersed in the Thames in Putney.