Man of the moment: Manmohan Singh

Cambridge man wins India trust vote

Although otherwise engaged, Manmohan Singh still found time last week to write to Dr Alison Richard, the vice-chancellor of Cambridge, who met the Prime Minister during her tour of India in January this year and will do so again when she returns to the country in January next year.

As before, they will discuss how to strengthen India-Cambridge links.

Ahead of the trust vote, Cambridge announced the winners of the first three “Dr Manmohan Singh Scholarships” — Niladri Banerjee, 24, of IIT Kanpur; Manasa Patnam, 23, from the Lahore University of Management Science; and Nitu Duggal, 31, who is already in Cambridge doing an MPhil.

These scholarships, sponsored by Rolls Royce India, the BP Foundation and the Tata group and managed by the British Council, “include academic fees, international airfare, a monthly stipend to cover living expenses and a UK visa”.

The three winners will do their PhDs at St John’s College, Cambridge, where Manmohan Singh took a First in economics as an undergraduate from 1955-57, before he went to Nuffield College, Oxford, for two years to do his DPhil after a three-year break in India.

Professor Christopher Dobson, Master of St John’s College, said: “We value the College’s strong association with India. This scholarship is our way to honour Dr Manmohan Singh for his pioneering role in the economic transformation of his country, one of the greatest achievements of any of our alumni.”

It seems Cambridge was never in any doubt that its man would triumph in the trust vote.

Incidentally, the university’s dons issued a diktat to that other Cambridge man at the centre of the Indian political drama that on no account was he to vacate his seat and take orders from non-Cambridge folk.

Cambridge dons, who are more persuasive than their Bombay underworld counterparts, say they were “pleased that our man, Somnath Chatterjee (Jesus: BA, 1952; MA, 1957), remained Speaker as instructed. He will, as per ancient statute, continue to enjoy all the privileges plus six course dinners with claret that go with being an Honorary Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge”.

India calling: British actress Greta Scacchi

Scacchi-ing the surface

Greta Scacchi, who appeared alongside Naseeruddin Shah and Om Puri at last week’s news conference in London to promote Jagmohan Mundhra’s Shoot on Sight, tells me she would “love to act in more Indian films”.

Born in Italy in 1960 to an English mother and an Italian father, Greta has both Italian and Australian nationality (because she lived in Australia for many years).

When I say I enjoyed her 1983 movie, Heat and Dust, which also starred Shashi Kapoor, she reminds me: “I also did Cotton Mary in 1999.”

The first was directed by James Ivory and produced by the late and much lamented Ismail Merchant; the second directed by Merchant.

Many British viewers will remember Greta from the 1987 film, White Mischief, which dramatised a murder case in Kenya in 1941, when Sir Henry “Jock” Delves Broughton, a British aristocrat, was tried for the killing of Josslyn Hay, Earl of Erroll. Greta played the Lady Diana Broughton, the dead man’s lover.

Greta, one of Britain’s most distinguished actresses, seems one of those women whose beauty has grown with the years. She will shortly be seen in the new film version of Brideshead Revisited, based on Evelyn Waugh’s novel.

In Shoot on Sight, Naseeruddin Shah plays a Muslim policeman at Scotland Yard and Greta his middle class English wife.

Not that this is especially relevant for India, but she has “appeared nude in several films. In fact, according to New Idea magazine, she has appeared naked in more films than any other ‘Australian’ actress.”

Greta is not ruling out Bollywood. She even did a little impromptu routine for Naseer and Om to demonstrate she is up for even Bollywood song and dance.

Novel enterprise: Shugufta Anwar

Undercover agent

Britain is still the place for Indian and Pakistani entrepreneurs with new ideas, as demonstrated by Shugufta Anwar, who has just launched Angiiya, a luxury lingerie line especially targeted at Asian brides.

“Angiiya is a Rajasthani word meaning undergarment,” says Shugufta, whose mother was born in Jaipur before Partition.

Shugufta was born in Karachi in 1962, arrived in Britain with her parents at five, and grew up in the Yorkshire steel city of Sheffield. Although married with two children and holding down a full-time job with an airline, she has long dreamt of starting her own fashion business — and last week it happened as she started her own website with tasteful pictures of models displaying her creations in Banarasi silk (working for an airline has meant she has been able to stock up on silk from India and elsewhere).

She says she spotted a gap in the market because very little attention is apparently given to lingerie when planning the otherwise elaborate trousseau for Indian and Pakistani brides.

Shugufta is frank enough to refer to (and remember) inexperienced fumblings with bra catches on “the all-important wedding night”.

Having travelled widely when she did the marketing for Libas, the Pakistani lifestyle magazine, Shugufta now offers her quick release solution: “Time to wear your front-fastening bra and side-tied pants.”

When it comes to luxury silk lingerie, the French are the acknowledged world leaders but Shugufta possibly has started something that may catch on.

“That idyllic honeymoon period will hopefully last for at least six months, and you will want to continue enjoying that intimacy, feeling sensual in your glorious Angiiya lingerie,” she says in her seductive voice.

In the unlikely event her venture fails, she shows promise as a writer of raunchy novelettes.

Have a seat: Indian dinner parties in London are now sit-down affairs

Sitting comfortably

It’s not that I get invited to that many Indian parties (especially since Ramola Bachchan returned to India) but I have noticed a new trend. Although buffets are still the norm because it is not rare for 100 plus guests to be invited to an Indian dinner, sit-down affairs at home with place names at table are becoming increasingly popular.

One London hostess recently invited 19 people to her apartment and was taken aback when all turned up.

“Normally, I can seat 12 round the table,” she explained.

She spends time devising the boy-girl, boy-girl seating arrangement traditional for seated dinner parties.

“It’s a lot more work,” she admitted.

Of course, having a seated dinner party requires guests to arrive on time, since “7 for 7:30pm” is a notion largely unfamiliar to Indians.

Hosting a seated dinner remains a risky business since guests tend to turn up with unannounced relatives or friends. No Bollywood star, for example, is likely to come without an entourage.

But whether seated or buffet, what Indians always bring are their business cards.

Tittle tattle

Just before a TV interview on BBC World, Naseeruddin Shah was asked by an Indian editor on BBC World whether he could be introduced as the “Anthony Hopkins of India”, thereby placing him on a par with The Silence of the Lambs star who is considered one of the greatest film actors in the world.

“This is your British complex,” observed Naseer, who was far from pleased.

“Why don’t you describe (Sir) Anthony Hopkins as ‘the Naseeruddin Shah of England’?” he suggested.