Just cause: (From left) Javed Akhtar, Shabana Azmi, Waheeda Rehman and Vishal Bhardwaj

Starry, starry nights in fight against cancer

Between £1,00,000 and £1,50,000 were raised last week in London at a £500 a ticket charity dinner, attended by Javed Akhtar, Shabana Azmi and Waheeda Rehman and aimed at raising funds for the Tata Medical Centre in Calcutta.

The stars were persuaded to give their unstinted backing to the cause of fighting cancer in India by Geeta Gopalakrishnan, the hospital’s principal fundraiser.

She said the hospital had treated 13,000 people in two years, half of them underprivileged. “Maximum numbers of cancers in India, according to the cancer registry, come from eastern India and these reports were fed to Mr (Ratan) Tata who decided, ‘Ok, let us then look at Calcutta.’ It was decided to build a world-class hospital. Mr Tata even chose the stone slabs. The poorest and the wealthiest are all there together.”

Businessmen, who hold Tata in high esteem, said in Britain the fortunes of Jaguar Land Rover had been transformed since his acquisition of the firm. They also suggested that the decision to block Tata’s entry into Singur was “the worst act of industrial vandalism in the history of the state”.

Before the banquet, Javed, Shabana and Waheeda were joined by director Vishal Bhardwaj and artist Paresh Maity in the Sabyasachi Mukherjee designed Cinema Suite at the St James Court Hotel to discuss the anti-cancer campaign with the Indian Journalists’ Association.

Javed said that film stars “have received love and appreciation from society — that has to be reciprocated.”

Waheeda agreed: “I was one of those to get love and respect — when Geeta approached me I said, ‘Yes what I can do I will be doing.’”

Geeta disclosed that when she approached The Telegraph in Calcutta for support, she was touched by the green signal from the very top: “Anything.”

Geeta herself moved Shabana who revealed: “Women’s health has always been an issue of great concern to me. Cancer was not so much on my radar — Geeta Gopalakrishnan is one of the most dedicated and passionate people that I have ever met. It was her passion that transmitted itself.”

Shabana spoke of the need for early detection of cervical and breast cancer through pap smears and mammograms and how attitudes had changed so that a mastectomy no longer caused shame as before. Although breastfeeding of babies is said to reduce cancer, Shabana stressed that women, suffering from malnutrition, “cannot produce milk so how is she going to feed her child?”

Art fest: Tagore with Lee Waisler’s painting

Tagore travels

Though I tend to think of Sundaram Tagore as a friend who owns an art gallery in New York, he tells me he now lives four days of the week in Hong Kong and three in Singapore.

“Hong Kong is buzzing,” asserts Sundaram, who has arrived in London for a major new exhibition, Art13, with entries by 129 galleries from 30 countries, including China, Japan and South Korea.

Sundaram’s mission is to find and promote the best of modern artists from around the globe.

For Art13, “I have brought a global community of artists,” he says. “I have participated in 100 art fairs and seen just about every art form that has been created.”

He points out the work in his stall: “They include a very famous Iranian artist Golnaz Fathi, who lives in Paris; South Korean artist Kim Joon; a very famous Mexican artist, Ricardo Mazal. He made a trip to Mount Kailash and worked with the idea of this trilogy of life, death and redemption. And I love the work of Sohan Qadri (the late Indian origin artist, poet and Tantric guru).”

There is also “a world renowned Japanese artist, Hiroshi Senju; and Lee Waisler, an American from Los Angeles — he has done the Mahatma Gandhi painting”.

Sundaram, who spent time as an art student in Britain, is keen to see the two great exhibitions currently on in London — Manet and Lichtenstein.

“I used to know him ages ago,” he says of Lichtenstein. “I had just arrived in New York and I remember we took the elevator together. Once you are in the trade...”

Tin times: Paresh Maity

Trunk call

Fresh from attending the press conference at the Sabyasachi Suite and before attending the gala charity dinner, where his painting was auctioned for £35,000, I find Paresh Maity at Art13, sitting with a dozen trunks of the traditional sort.

He has painted the trunks, all procured in Delhi, “in vibrant, striking colours”.

He has called the collection Story of Our Lives because who hasn’t used such a trunk?

They have been used in hostels during school or college days or pushed under a seat during a train journey or under a bed at home stuffed with everything from “quilts and pillows to school certificates”.

“Everybody has some relationship with a trunk,” he observes wisely.

India Centre

Happy but exhausted after his whirlwind trip to Mumbai and Delhi with David Cameron, Lord Gulam Noon has announced the setting up of an India Centre at the University of East London.

The businessman, who has become the university’s chancellor, has already funded the new Noon Centre for Equality and Diversity in Business at UEL.

Now, he has announced the India Centre will be located inside the Noon Centre.

“It will have rows of computers,” enthused Noon. “People will be taught how to handle stocks and shares.”

The department may well become oversubscribed if it starts producing undergraduate millionaires.

Soul talk

Jonathan Agnew had to bare his soul somewhat when he appeared recently on Desert Island Discs, the BBC Radio 4 programme on which guests talk about their lives as they choose eight favourite pieces of music.

Most listeners to Test Match Special probably had no idea that “Aggers”, as the BBC cricket commentator is known, has had a difficult relationship with his two daughters, now aged 27 and 24.

Aggers and his first wife Beverley divorced in 1992 after nine years together. He married his second wife, television editor Emma, in 1996, becoming stepfather to her children.

“My relationship with my kids is the one sad area of my life,” he told the presenter Kirsty Young, speaking up for single fathers. “Divorce is something I think that children feel particularly hard and what’s sad about a lot of divorces, and certainly about my divorce, is that absent fathers who really want to play a part in their children’s lives but don’t live there, they have a pretty tough time.”

Homeward bound: Prabhat Verma

Tittle tattle

The man who persuaded Sabyasachi Mukherjee to design the Cinema Suite at St James Court Hotel in London was Prabhat Verma, the hotel’s general manager.

Prabhat is now returning to India to become chief operating officer of Gateway Hotels, a budget division of Taj Hotels — he confides one will be built in Calcutta. His successor, Digvijay Singh, is already in place.

In these days of care for animals, Sabyasachi’s boldest if not his wisest decision was to install three mounted deer heads on the wall of the study, which offers a nod to The Godfather.

I understand among those who have slept in the £5,000 a night suite is Amitabh Bachchan. He had sweet dreams gazing fondly at the portrait by his bedside. It was his own.