Tee tale: Grant Gordon in India

Getting Calcutta in one

Grant Gordon, a British radio programme maker, has found a novel way of writing about India.

Having criss-crossed India playing golf, he has written an entertaining book, Cobras in the Rough: An Indian Odyssey (Constable and Robinson; £12.99).

“I played in 25 to 30 golf courses all over India,” Grant tells me.

“Do you play golf?” he asks.

The nearest I have got to golf, I admit, is taking tea at the Tollygunge Club in Calcutta.

Mention of Calcutta, a city he hugely enjoyed visiting in October 2010, sends Grant into raptures: “The two most wonderful golf courses I played in were in Calcutta.”

One is the Royal Calcutta Golf Club, founded in 1829 and said to be the oldest in the world outside Scotland. The other is the Tollygunge.

“Did you come across any cobras in Calcutta?” I ask the author who has devoted a chapter, The Punkah Wallahs of the Tollygunge, to Calcutta.

“No,” says Grant, “only wild dogs running across the fairway.”

He might as well be referring to the running dogs of capitalism since “the popularity of golf has grown with economic prosperity”.

Grant has “played golf in the mountains of Kashmir, on Tiger Hill in Darjeeling, against the backdrop of the Taj Mahal in Agra and on the site of the Lucknow 1857 siege”.

He did come across a cobra in Delhi and a python in Kodaikanal in the south, he confirms.

“But the book is about more than golf,” explains the author, who was seeking a deeper understanding of his recently deceased father, Tom.

“My father came to India with Mountbatten (in 1947),” reveals his son. “He was with the RAF and flew Mountbatten to Karachi.”

At the Tolly in Calcutta, Grant had a memorable experience when invited to play golf with three “seriously posh society ladies”, excellent players all, but whose identities are disguised as “Mrs Sharma, Khan and Patel”.

Mrs Sharma, we learn, “played four times a week. She never mentioned Mr Sharma. Perhaps he had passed away. Or worse, perhaps he was rubbish at golf.”

Grant picks up on even small boys behaving badly with staff. The “noisy little gits” talked loudly on their cellphones to their parents and expertly hit the balls. “These little maharajahs owned this place and they knew it. I realised that the role of the staff guy I had greeted was to stand by the tee and place a new ball on it each time one of the brats had made a shot,” observes Grant. “So that they didn’t have to do it themselves.” Throughout the session, the boys never said a word to him or even acknowledged him.

Somerville sisters: Thatcher and (right) Gandhi

India’s Indira

Lord Swraj Paul, who remains steadfastly loyal to the memory of Indira Gandhi, has been up to Oxford to dine at Somerville College where the late Indian Prime Minister arrived as an undergraduate in 1937 — six years before Margaret Roberts (later Thatcher) came up to the same institution to read chemistry.

The college is seeking to raise funds with the intention of establishing an Indira Gandhi Centre and adding a “significant number” of students from India.

“Mrs Gandhi deserves much more than maybe I can afford,” says Swraj. “The principal is a lovely lady.”

Indeed, she is.

Dr Alice Prochaska, Somerville’s principal who herself read history at the college from 1965 to 1968, left for India this weekend as part of the vice-chancellor’s party.

On her last trip to India in 2010 she had to wait an hour at immigration on arrival in Delhi and wrote tongue-in-cheek: “What better way to pass the time in New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi Airport than by updating my blog.”

“I want to use Somerville to open up Oxford to more Indian students,” Dr Prochaska told me before departure.

She remembers how Dame Janet Vaughan, the principal during her time as student, would routinely raise a toast during dinner “to our first Prime Minister”.

Of course, that was Mrs Gandhi, she says.

Recently, Somerville girls saw a screening of The Iron Lady, which won Meryl Streep an Oscar for her portrayal of Mrs Thatcher. The girls then heard a talk from one of the film’s producers, Tessa Ross, who arrived at Somerville to read oriental studies in 1980 (as head of films at Channel 4, Tessa also had a big hand in getting Slumdog Millionaire off the ground).

What about another film like The Iron Lady but this time on Mrs Gandhi?

“Wouldn’t that be great!” said Dr Prochaska with a laugh. “What a lovely idea! Maybe we should put it into Tessa’s head.”

 

Captain’s inning: A TV grab of Bibek Mukherjee

Master stroke

In University Challenge, a quiz show featuring some of the cleverest young men and women in the country, the performance of Bibek Mukherjee, the captain of the team from Pembroke College, Cambridge, has been especially impressive.

Irrespective of who wins the final between Pembroke and Manchester University on March 19, Bibek has done exceptionally well.

Bibek, who read economics at Cambridge, was born in Calcutta on November 19, 1989, of parents — Subir Kumar Mukherjee and Kirtida Mukherjee — who emigrated to the UK where both are now hospital consultants.

Bibek went to King’s School, Canterbury, where Stuart Pocock, head of mathematics, said: “Bibek was an outstanding mathematician. He is possessed of a remarkable, enquiring, and penetrating mind.”

His housemaster, Simon Anderson, agreed: “He achieved 11 A*s at GCSE. He left King’s with A grades at A level in economics, chemistry, maths, further maths, French and history, almost all with full marks! Whilst at school Bibek founded an Indian Society. We are delighted, but not at all surprised in his performances for Pembroke on University Challenge.”

Virgin’s back

Sir Richard Branson, England’s answer to Vijay Mallya, is to resume flying to Mumbai. The Virgin Atlantic service to Mumbai, suspended in 2009, is to resume from October 28, 2012.

“India’s phenomenal growth continues to drive travel to the UK and the US and we know our passengers are going to love the connections the new flight offers,” the airline says.

All we now need is for Calcutta to be connected to London and New York with direct flights. Perhaps Calcutta should invite Branson to be its brand ambassador.

 

Queen chef: Shelina Permalloo

Curry crown

Congratulations to Shelina Permalloo, 29, who is tipped to challenge the voluptuous Nigella Lawson for the title of Domestic Goddess, after she won MasterChef last week, the second woman to win the title in seven years.

Shelina, who is of part Indian origin, was born in Britain of parents who came from the Mauritius. Her winning meal included the good old mutton curry with biryani rice as the main course. Dessert was mango cannelloni with mango jelly squares.

 

 

 

Tittle tattle

The term “wedding of the year” is overused but it could be applied to the forthcoming nuptials of Farrah Pervez, daughter of Sir Anwar Pervez, who is probably the richest and certainly the most respected Pakistani in the UK.

Turnover of his Bestway group, which includes Cash & Carry in Britain and banking and cement in Pakistan, is excess of £2 billion — not bad considering Sir Anwar started with one cornershop in London.